Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2009-12-17-Speech-4-041"
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"en.20091217.3.4-041"2
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"Mr President, regarding post-2013 cohesion policy, a leaked draft budgetary document entitled ‘A Reform Agenda for a Global Europe’ reveal that EU funding from 2013 onwards could change entirely to a nationally coordinated rather than regionally allocated distribution.
Larger shares of the EU budget will need to be devoted to such an agenda at the expense of regions such as Wales. The last payments to projects under the 2007-2013 EU structural funds programmes will be made in 2015. There is uncertainty over what, if any, subsequent EU funding will be available to Wales in future funding rounds.
The implication that cohesion might disappear entirely from richer nations with no mention at all of transitional funding would further disenfranchise the people of the UK.
The disproportionate membership bill would be better steered towards funding economic development through self-sufficiency determined by the UK itself.
The EU budget review set to be published in the spring will likely see every government in Europe declare the necessity for increased public sector borrowing. It seems increasingly likely that the level of funding available to Wales will reduce substantially.
The consequences will include reductions in programme budgets, less investment in the wider economy in Wales, and broad-reaching loss of jobs connected to programme management and project delivery.
Rather than having any sort of beneficial effect on my constituents, the EU will serve a glancing blow to the people of Wales if they decide to pull the rug from under our feet. The likely result of the reduction in funding to Wales and the UK will have a major impact on our country as a whole which will affect the farming sector as well.
It now must be time that the people of Wales and the UK have a referendum on its relations with the European Union so the people can decide if they want to be governed by Westminster or Brussels.
The draft abandons regional and local level control in multi-level governance, overturning the shared management principle. Instead, a sectoral approach to the new budget is adopted rather than operating independently within current structures.
The proposal to limit the policy to national level would lead to qualifying Member States governing redistribution. Not only does this mean that net contributors will lose further return funding, but those Member States expected to join the European Union under future expansion would enter membership under cohesion funding likely to remain for the forthcoming budgetary duration.
As a result, those countries who currently shoulder a large proportion of the Union’s financial burden, like the UK, will discover they must finance an ever-increasing pool of Member States qualifying for support.
Even fewer will have to carry even more, with a possible loss of the rebate for the UK. With more countries queuing up to join the EU, I am concerned Wales will see much needed support go to newer Member States.
It is no surprise that some of Europe’s richest countries like Norway and Switzerland have given the European Union a wide berth, knowing that they would be paying to fund their poorer neighbours. But Wales cannot afford to pay if nothing is paid back out.
The move reinforces the European Union’s increasing ambition to become further integrated, centralised and federal, yet abandons the regional dimension of cohesion policy which underpins the European Union’s pledge to support territorial cohesion and deliver benefits to all members.
Instead the EU, like a wolf in sheep’s clothing, is covertly abandoning cooperation and compromise in favour of consolidation.
Whereas the people of Europe were told the Union – on the grounds that it enhanced trade links – strengthened agriculture ties and promoted equality, the machinations of an increasing bureaucratic global Europe see the focus on farming and regional development decrease in favour of an unwanted ambitious global strategy, including increased emigration to countries like the UK."@en1
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