Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2010-10-19-Speech-2-280"
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"Mr President, Minister, Commissioner, I, too, should like to commend the rapporteurs and, in particular, Mrs Jędrzejewska and Mrs Trüpel. I think that Mrs Trüpel has done a tremendous job, a truly outstanding job, enabling even budget veterans, those who have been drafting budgets for years in this House, to work under new conditions – those of the Treaty of Lisbon – with a single reading. In any case, an excellent job has been done – thank you.
This has also been a marathon in which our group chairs – there is only one of them left in the Chamber now – all took part at some point. At times, we were a little afraid that things would turn out badly, but fortunately, that was not at all the case, thanks to our rapporteurs and to our President. It may be unorthodox, but I should like to commend his work also. We have benefited from the fact that the group chairs wish to table with us an ambitious budget and, above all, to forge a link with the follow-up, with what will come afterwards, in the Special Committee on the policy challenges and budgetary resources for a sustainable European Union after 2013 (SURE), and in the context of the forthcoming budgetary perspective, because, clearly, the 2011 budget is one thing, but what comes afterwards is far more significant. I am delighted that together, we, the group chairs and the Committee on Budgets, have reached an agreement.
We will see! The fact remains that, for the moment, we have a parliamentary position, and having heard what Mr Wathelet had to say about the Council’s views, I obviously have some concerns about what awaits us in conciliation. It will not be easy because, between the requests made by the Council and those made by Parliament, we will struggle to come to an agreement. I am counting on you to help us in this matter and to come up with a truly ambitious budget.
Those in the Council who are criticising, for example, the increase in payment appropriations, are being unfair to this budget. These are past commitments; this is a question of credibility: when we pay what we said we would pay, we are simply doing what we ought to do, even if it goes beyond the payment appropriations. I think we should be careful not to miss the point here.
While we will support the resolution tomorrow, I think there are some inconsistencies in this budget, and I would like to highlight what I consider to be two of the main ones.
A few months ago, we all voted on this major resolution on the 2020 programme, in which we decided to include items such as the greening of the economy, support for renewable energies, green technologies and so on, and everything that creates work and jobs. It was from this point of view that, in order to formalise our intentions, we tabled an amendment specifically to ensure that sustainable development criteria are taken out of the LIFE programme but included in all the other areas. I believe that that amendment will be rejected tomorrow. Nevertheless, I invite you to support our amendment so that sustainable development criteria are about action and not just talk.
I now come to the second contradiction: the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER). ITER’s budget has been reduced by 45 million. That is something, at least. Above all, however, there were attempts to take that money from agricultural policy; fortunately, it was not taken from there, but from research, which is not much better. Here again, I am referring to what Ban Ki-moon was saying to us this morning. He called on us Europeans to be pioneers in the field of renewable energies, to strongly promote new types of energy and not those of the past, not those that earn money first and foremost for shareholders but fail to help European consumers or future generations of Europeans, who are going to have to continue to manage the issue of waste. This all or nothing strategy with regard to ITER – one which will ultimately cost EUR 1.5 billion – is, in my view, a big mistake, and I believe that we are not doing what we said we would do in the 2020 resolution.
Lastly, to conclude, there are a few timetabling issues: we also have economic governance, the winding-up of the Council’s task force, and the Commission’s proposals; a great deal of work will be required to link up this budget with future budgets and the financial perspective."@en1
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