Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2012-10-22-Speech-1-043-000"
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"en.20121022.19.1-043-000"2
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".
Mr President, President of the Council, Commissioner Lewandowski, ladies and gentlemen, I am very disappointed by what we have heard from the representatives of the Cyprus Presidency of the Council today, by the restrictive approach it wants to take to the important instrument of the European Union’s budget for the 2013 financial year. I deeply regret the fact that the Council can still not find the right balance between austerity and the need to boost growth at European level. We need sustainable growth! We need to make progress in combating climate change! We have to bring forward the energy revolution. We have to invest in renewable energy because that creates new jobs. And, above all, we have to instil new confidence in the citizens of the European Union.
But how can you instil the hard-pressed people with new confidence when they find that, even now, in 2012, the Commission is no longer in a position to pay out the money for the European Social Fund? Surely you are sending absolutely the wrong signal here. And that is why I very strongly criticise the approach the Council is taking here, in now failing to make the necessary appropriations available for the agreements it subscribed to in the first place. Let me repeat that this undermines people’s confidence in the European project and in the European Council’s sense of responsibility. It is a wrong policy and that is why we must reject it.
We have just heard that there are now payment problems even with programmes such as Lifelong Learning – programmes that really are directed at individual citizens, at students and schoolchildren. This situation just cannot go on! Things must change next year. If you want to create more confidence in Europe’s ability to act at European level, then you cannot cut this budget in the way the Council is currently proposing to do.
The Greens take the view that of course we also have to propose savings: for instance in regard to the ITER nuclear fusion reactor, which unfortunately a majority here in Parliament and in the Council want to fund. We do not think that sets the right signal at a time when we need an energy revolution and we believe that instead we must focus more on wind energy, photovoltaics and other sustainable energy sources. A brief word to say that we are prepared, even where it affects us ourselves, to handle the resources in a very responsible and careful manner. As Mr Vaughan has said, we have only a 1.9 % increase in the European budget. We MEPs could in fact save even more if we were prepared to give up short-haul business flights. I hope Members will give that some thought!"@en1
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