Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2012-02-16-Speech-4-075-000"
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"en.20120216.7.4-075-000"2
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"Mr President, Commissioner, I would like to apologise. The Parliament building’s lifts were very busy. Perhaps the manufacturers should think about including a priority override function. That is why I am a little late.
Secondly, I hope and demand that the Commission tables this legislative proposal as soon as possible.
Thirdly, I call on the Council to push through reasonable and sufficient funding within the budget and to take the necessary decision.
Commissioner, I am much obliged to you for answering these pressing questions. Forgive me if I repeat myself a little, but I simply want to emphasise a point – I believe that the GMES (Global Monitoring for Environment and Security) programme is one of the two leading initiatives in the European Union’s space policy and is of key importance for the monitoring of the Earth. This, in turn, is an indispensable instrument in the fight against climate change, environmental pollution, disaster prevention and security, sustainable development, mobility and crisis management.
GMES was established as a Union programme and will receive funding of about EUR 3.2 billion from the budget until 2013. The lack of a workable financial plan for long-term, solid financial support would probably mean that the costs will rise in the long term. The programme and the associated supply of data could be temporarily suspended or even abandoned entirely. In the final analysis, this could mean that the investments previously made will have been in vain.
Europe could lose its independence and technological edge in relation to this important space infrastructure. What is at issue? We are talking about a sum of EUR 5.8 billion for the period 2014 to 2020, admittedly a very large amount of money, but one that offers a very substantial economic benefit. Despite the current budgetary difficulties in many Member States, GMES must be sufficiently financed in the budget and through the financial perspective.
Mr Barnier, you wrote us a letter recently. If I might quote you: ‘Europe should not be satisfied with defensive answers to the crisis – however important this may be – Europe must also open up the prospect of new growth for its citizens!’ This idea could be expressed very succinctly. It is possible to drive oneself to destruction through excessive savings. This principle applies in a different context to an important Member State of the European Union.
If GMES is to be run on an intergovernmental basis in future outside the budget, so that Parliament would no longer have a say in the project, then, in my opinion, the European space strategy would be doomed before it even began. This is why we are calling for a legislative proposal from the Commission for the long-term administration, financing and implementation of GMES and the embedding of the budget in medium-term financial planning.
The Danish Presidency announced conclusions for the Competitiveness Council on 21 February and then cancelled them again because there was no majority in the Council. Some Member States question whether the Council Working Party on Space should be responsible for this project, which I find particularly surprising. Unfortunately, this development in the Council has given rise to two camps. One camp, a group of Member States that fund GMES through the budget, has also written to you. A second group wants to follow the proposal tabled by the Commission. If this stalemate continues, I fear that GMES may fail and that an enormous opportunity will have been lost.
This is quite apart from the fact that many millions of euro already spent on the project will have been spent for nothing. The greatest risk, however, is that we will set a precedent, and that the Member States will use this to justify activities outside of the Treaty of Lisbon. I thought we had put these times behind us. I have three demands.
Firstly, I hope that we, the European Parliament, will be courageous enough to continue to finance the major projects of the EU, such as GMES, but also Galileo and ITER, through the budget and to establish separate budget lines with sufficient reserves for this purpose."@en1
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