Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-11-20-Speech-4-140"
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"en.20031120.5.4-140"2
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"Mr President, I am sorry that it is Commissioner Kinnock who has to be here this afternoon to take this criticism on the chin, because I in no way regard him as personally responsible for the situation in which we find ourselves.
I shall put some simple questions to which we all know the answers and on which we are all agreed. Is the average European citizen in need of extra information about the European Union? Yes. Is information needed in the Member States and locally rather than in Brussels? Yes. Do the Info-Points help meet that need? Yes. Is next year, with enlargement, with the new Constitution, with elections, a year when the information will be more necessary than usual? Yes. Has the Commission got its organisation and priorities right on information policy? That is questionable.
Of course expenditure must meet legal requirements and if a legal base is necessary then it must be found. We employ lawyers precisely to check on those points in good time, advise if there is a problem and indicate a solution. We knew about the problem in January and the Commission's solution was to send the Info-Points a letter at the end of September. That really is not good enough. After all, the amount of expenditure is pretty minimal. It has been allocated over a good many years.
If the Commission doubts the need for Info-Points and the more effective information programme, let me draw attention to statistics in recent polls. 90% of Spaniards have never heard of the Convention. 31% of Germans have never heard of the Commission and 25% of Britons do not even know that the United Kingdom is a member of the European Union
but 7% of them think that America is!
The English language is rich in expressions. Let me try and find some that fit this situation. The tail is wagging the dog. The Commission appears to be unable to see the wood for the trees. Experts should be on tap, not on top. I could carry on with vulgar expressions about breweries and organising parties in them. There is not a major legal difficulty here, it is a technical problem. If the Commission had clear and accepted priorities and could see the wood for the trees, we would not be having this debate this afternoon.
I welcome Commissioner Kinnock's statement, but he knows as well as we do that it has come far too late and it really should not have been necessary. Sadly, this is another own goal by the Commission. I hope that the letter that will be sent to the Info-Points will contain an apology."@en1
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