Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-07-04-Speech-2-172"
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"en.20000704.8.2-172"2
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"Mr President, it was to be expected, but it always causes a certain degree of anxiety, mixed with impatience, to see once again that the negotiation of the European budget still leads to the conflict so typical of recent years. This is almost a carbon copy of the procedure for the 2000 budget.
Once again, the insufficiency of what was adopted in Berlin, in March 1999, for external policy, rocks the foundations of the Community budget. The Council’s short-sightedness hinders any logical solution. Rather than a budgetary cycle, ladies and gentlemen, it appears that we have a budgetary big wheel.
Somehow or other, the Commission has honoured its commitment to propose a multi-annual plan for the Balkans. However, sincerely, I agree to a large extent with the Council’s criticism that the figures do not seem particularly well founded. As the former MEP, Lord Tomlinson, said, there is nothing more expensive than a meal amongst Foreign Affairs Ministers: they are always ready to promise money without considering where it will come from.
I truly believe that the proposal is rather inappropriate and has no sense of time. They are proposing to move funds intended for agriculture to foreign policy and these proposals have not even been accepted by the United Kingdom. Just imagine. That is no way to make progress.
With regard to Serbia, they propose more than EUR 2 billion over the period. I would like to remind you, ladies and gentlemen, that in order to topple Pinochet, the European Community spent EUR 10 million. Our contribution to the campaign against Pinochet in the referendum was EUR 10 million.
We spend EUR 40 million a year on the democratic forces in Serbia and they are asking for two hundred and something more. When Milosevic falls, I will be the first to accept a revision of the financial perspectives. However, meanwhile, let us forget the annual EUR 200 million from now until the end of the period. Let us not push things to the limit.
Ladies and Gentlemen, I do not know if the Council is aware of the real situation. If it rules out – as it has ruled out – moving money from category 1A, Agriculture, to category 4, and does not accept any increase in the ceiling of category 4 for foreign policy, and all of this must be done by means of a redistribution of resources, we are simply dealing with a case of a non-revision of the financial perspectives. We are simply dealing with a case of budgetary procedure in the field of non-obligatory expenditure and, therefore, the most that could be said would be that the Council has not complied with Article 20 of the Interinstitutional Agreement."@en1
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