Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-09-23-Speech-2-211"
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"en.20030923.5.2-211"2
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"Mr President, speaking about issues which concern the Committee on Regional Policy, Transport and Tourism, I should like to start with the issues touched on by Commissioner Barnier, the issues of regional policy, and to say here that, as far as the previous period from 1994 to 1999 is concerned, as he himself admitted, developments are not the most propitious. There is a delay in closing dossiers, the basic responsibility for which lies with the Member States, which are late submitting all the information required or, in all events, when they do submit it, do not submit it in the proper form. That is why there are funds which have not yet been paid to the Member States and that is creating a problem both with the Community budget and, of course, with the national budgets.
By contrast, there are more positive developments in the new programming period from 2000 to 2006, although here too, of course, we must be very, very careful. I noted with satisfaction that this year we are doing better than last year from the point of view of the take-up of appropriations and trust that the n+2 rule, despite the criticism it sometimes receives, even here in Parliament, is a rule which will result in proper management on the part of the Member States as regards programming and managing the sums of money. Besides, we should not forget that it was the Member States themselves which, in unanimously adopting the current Structural Fund regulations, came to accept this n+2 rule.
These, broadly speaking, are also the reasons why, in our committee at least, we propose to return essentially to the preliminary draft budget initially submitted by the Commission as far as category II of the budget is concerned.
As far as the other matters are concerned, I should like to comment in particular on the trans-European networks and to say that, even after the van Miert report of 30 June this year, and pending the proposal to reform the trans-European networks, our committee wishes to note their importance and to stress that words and deeds must coincide at some point. If we want to promote the trans-European networks, we need to find ways of funding them and one of these ways is obviously the Community budget.
I should also like to comment on the issue of the European Maritime Safety Agency, the headquarters of which have not been decided. The fact that the headquarters of this agency have not been decided should not lead us to conclude that we should also not fund it. We need to put sums of money in reserve so that, when the headquarters are decided, we are ready to fund this agency, which will play a particularly important role in these issues of safety at sea which we debated this morning.
I should also like to underline the importance of two issues to which we are not, I think, paying proper attention. One is tourism, where we consider that a number of pilot programmes which will strengthen small and medium-sized enterprises in the sector in particular should be funded and, the second, which is sometimes undervalued, is safe transport where, here too, we believe that we could proceed to increase the funds somewhat."@en1
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