Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2009-05-06-Speech-3-009"
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"en.20090506.2.3-009"2
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"Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, as soon as agreement was reached on the 2009 budget the Commission presented a proposal on the revision of the MFF in order to finance trans-European energy networks and broadband infrastructure projects in the context of the European Economic Recovery Plan.
In retrospect we must say, first, that this has complicated proceedings, as we did not consider it right and appropriate that new proposals should be presented just a few days after agreement was reached on the budget and, second, that it would have been virtually impossible to reach agreement with the Council both on the food aid facility and on these elements of the economic stimulus package on completion of the 2009 budget. In the original proposal to provide five billion through a revised financial perspective split into two tranches – EUR 3.5 billion in 2009 and EUR 2.5 billion in 2010 – the Commission learned from the budget disaster of the proposal on the food aid facility. What the Commission presented on that occasion did not correspond to what had been agreed in the budget. This is clearly the case here too.
I welcome the fact that the Commission took up the suggestion from the Committee on Budgets, which we made in the first debate, to limit the review and to leave matters relating to rural areas and broadband and the modernisation of these structures in rural areas in heading 2 in the agriculture budget, and not to transfer them to heading 1a. This was a proper suggestion, which had come from this House, and which was acted upon.
In the second round we learned that it was the Council that initially said that the Commission could not present this proposal for the food aid facility and that it was in principle a review. The Council simply wanted to slink past the budgetary conditions and agreements. We correctly rectified this in the negotiations and in the trialogue of 2 April. I believe that we have taken the first correct step through our proposal to provide EUR 2.6 billion in a first step, to raise the ceiling for the year 2009 for commitment appropriations under subheading 1a by an amount of EUR 2 billion, to lower the ceiling of heading 2 by the same amount, and to provide EUR 600 million for rural development. We will endeavour to secure the remaining EUR 2.4 billion through a compensation at the conciliation of the 2010 and 2011 budgetary procedures by using all – and I quote, because it is important – ‘by using all means foreseen in its legal framework and without prejudice to the financial envelopes of the co-decided programmes and the annual budgetary procedure’.
It was also important to us that commitments entered into should not be affected and curtailed across the headings. That is why the breakdown we decided on was what could be negotiated in this timeframe, because we all realised we had to push forward the subject of energy solidarity and the modernisation of infrastructures, including the health check measures, in this parliamentary term.
However, it is also clear that what we said in the plenary session of the European Parliament on 25 March regarding the review of the multiannual financial framework needs to be on the agenda even more urgently. We call on the Commission to take into consideration all these deliberations on flexibility and improved conduct of negotiations in the context of budgetary policy annually and multiannually during the deliberations on the review of the multiannual financial plan in the autumn. These annual negotiations with the Council about the same issues year in, year out that we get bogged down in because one side does not want to move are just a shambles, and they have to stop, because no one outside understands what is going on any more. We need more flexibility, more manoeuvrability in the multiannual budgetary procedure. The Commission is called upon to learn from these experiences from the last two to three years and present relevant proposals in the autumn. We expect nothing less!"@en1
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