Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-12-03-Speech-3-231"
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"en.20081203.19.3-231"2
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"Mr President, the food facility began as a proposal from the Commission, in the light of the rising food prices that provoked riots in some countries, to use EUR 1 billion in leftover agricultural subsidy money to relieve the situation in developing countries through agricultural inputs and emergency safety nets. The money was, in this form, expected to be wholly additional to existing development funds. Now, five months later, we have our billion, but it is in an entirely different form than that originally envisaged.
Two Fridays ago, I attended the budget conciliation meeting, with my colleagues from the Committee on Budgets and the Council, where we were finally able to reach a compromise over the funding of the food facility regulation. The last sticking points were then ironed out on the following Monday at a trialogue between Parliament, Commission and Council.
The final compromise funding looks like this: EUR 1 billion to be financed over a period of three years, 2008-2010, via the flexibility instrument accounting for EUR 420 million; redeployment, with Heading 4, ‘External actions’, giving another EUR 240 million; and the increase of the emergency aid reserve by EUR 240 million for 2008. This increase requires a revision of the interinstitutional agreement. This amount is additional to another EUR 100 million used from the existing emergency aid reserve. As the emergency aid reserve is made up of contributions by the Member States, the top-up of funding will only be additional if the Member States do not compensate for their contributions by a corresponding reduction of the national budgets.
It has been suggested that there are noises of dissatisfaction from the Committee on Foreign Affairs and others about the part-financing of this from the Stability Fund. The Foreign Affairs Committee may be unhappy about this but it was probably about the best deal that could be done in the circumstances.
Although I support the compromise we have now reached, I have made a point of mentioning the shortcomings of the process and the outcome, both in the interests of honesty and to highlight – as I have done on previous occasions – the ludicrous situation where governments across the globe are producing multiple billions of dollars to bail out banks but have to search their souls to find, between 27 Member States and the budget of this Union, EUR 1 billion for the poorest people in the world.
I think we have done the best we could have done in a hundred days. We have found the money and we have put the regulation together, but it is not a totally additional billion. The content of this report includes the fact that the compromise text has already been accepted by all Member States in COREPER, and that essential elements from my report and the amendments from my colleagues on the Committee on Development are in it.
The regulation is limited in time. It now runs until the end of 2010. It concentrates on tackling the short-term crisis; its objectives are to boost agricultural production. It opposes the dispersion of funds by confining its use to a limited list of high-priority countries. It also widens the scope of possible implementing organisations and ensures parliamentary accountability. There are two statements appended to the regulation which help to ensure its proper implementation.
At the end of the day, I think we have done the best we can between Council, Parliament and Commission. We have done it in a hundred days. We have brought the law before Parliament. We will vote on it tomorrow. It is already agreed. We have found the money. I would like, in that context, to pay tribute to the cooperation we received from the Council and the Commission, particularly from Commissioner Michel, who really did want this money to be additional.
I would also like to thank the secretariat of the Development Committee, particularly Guido Van Hecken and Anne McLauchlan and to thank, in my office, Eoin Ó Seanáin and Oliver O’Callaghan, who were very helpful in all of this. I think at the end of the day that it is a good day’s work and the best we could have done."@en1
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