Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2012-03-29-Speech-4-078-000"
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"en.20120329.4.4-078-000"2
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"Mr President, honourable Members, let me first of all thank you very much for this very warm welcome to the European Parliament for a long-time parliamentarian who, after 25 years, gave up his parliamentary seat just a couple of weeks ago. It is good to be back and to be in a debate. I welcome and thank you for so many interesting questions and suggestions in width and in depth. Unfortunately, I will not be able to cover all this in the remaining four minutes but let me assure you that I will be available to Parliament and its committees whenever you consider it useful.
I believe there is a hidden treasure in Luxembourg. You here are all experts. You are all the European Investment Bank. If I go to the politicians on the budget committees or the economic committees of the parliaments of the Member States, I find limited knowledge about the EIB. Nobody knows what a valuable instrument this is for the European institutions. This is an institution which, by its lending volume, is far bigger than the World Bank. We must make this known among our citizens in the European Union because this is something we can bring into place when it goes in favour of job creation in Europe, change in the environmental situation in Europe, climate action, and when it comes to boosting innovation, growth and employment.
We should develop this institution. Here, I consider this Parliament to be one of the best allies of the European Investment Bank and this is why I do not shy away from questions of transparency, compliance and auditing. I just went through my first experiences as President of the Bank in the field of auditing and compliance and I must say that I am proud of the procedures that have been adopted and improved over the last couple of years. There is always room for improvement. I am ready to talk about this with this Parliament. We have seen that the question of transparency plays such an important role for the European Parliament. I welcome this and this is a promise I can give you.
What I would like to stress is the excellent cooperation we have with the Commission and I thank, in particular, Commissioner Rehn, but his colleagues as well, for this cooperation. I do not agree with the suggestion that might lie between the lines of what Ms Gräßle said. She said, do not draw funds from the European Commission, from the Union, over to the Bank. No, we have to do this together. We have to use the financing instruments of the Bank in order to reach the goals and the objectives of the Commission and the Union in general. This is the way we cooperate and this cooperation works very well.
In this context, also in view of the new instruments we are developing, it is very important to bring in the expertise of the Bank at a very early stage. What impressed me the most when I arrived at the Bank was the fact that I found not only an incredible wealth of financial and banking expertise, I found also an incredible wealth of engineering capacities, of science and technology experts, and things like that. This is so important in coming to a really sound assessment of projects and proposals and we should, in the best sense of the word, bank on that. I think the Commission is doing that again and again, because our expertise is needed again and again.
The activities of the bank have clearly been expanded from purely lending to also blending with the resources of the Commission and Parliament and the European institutions and advising, because the expertise that our bank incorporates can be made available to the Member States, to our partners in business. Business: this is the point. If I welcomed the pilot phase for the project bonds so warmly, which is obviously clear now, then this is also due to the fact that this is a very valuable instrument with which to get experience in raising private money. For the huge infrastructure challenges to be met over the next couple of years, we need to be able to attract more private money and this is how the European Investment Bank can make a contribution.
A lot of things have been said about SMEs. If I look at the strengths of the economies of some of our Member States at least, or the European economy in general, one can say that here is the backbone of employment, of innovation in the European Union, so it is clear that we must strengthen them. We must also strengthen them where they are not so strong yet, but we have indeed been very active in the last couple of years. If I remember the figures correctly – we are talking about the 2010 annual report – more than EUR 11.5 billion was given out in cooperation with these small and medium-sized industries; overall, it is about 120 000.
A last word, on innovation. In my view, this is the most important thing we need to think about in looking at our overall role. Our overall role is to contribute to the competitiveness of Europe in the globalised world. The share of innovation activities we all have there is not, in my view, sufficient. So, in addition, to what I have said about energy and energy efficiency, new energies in the fields of SMEs, innovation might be a very important additional pillar. Thank you very much and I am looking forward to very good cooperation with this Parliament."@en1
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