Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-12-16-Speech-2-138"
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"en.20031216.4.2-138"2
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"Mr President, like others I would like to thank those who have been part of this budgetary process, particularly our rapporteurs as we come to the end of the fixing of the 2004 budget. As others have commented, it will be sad to have a Committee on Budgets without the chairmanship and the fairness, humour and goodwill of Mr Terry Wynn. But who is to say who will be chairman of that committee? If the biggest group in this Parliament decided to have the Committee on Budgets as its primary committee then it would not naturally fall to the PSE if it was not the largest group. But this is all for the future and we should not be indulging in too much speculation. Rather we should be happy that we have had a great chairman who has been in charge of our committee during this period in Parliament.
I would like to stick to three themes. The first is the question of the Commission reform. In this debate I have heard it said that we should not be having reserves, particularly a reserve on Commission posts at this stage, because the Commission would like to have all those posts for enlargement purposes. We fully understand that, but we think that a small number – 25 out of 270 or so posts – should be located there because we would like to have a clearer definition of what has actually been achieved in the reform process and what still needs to be done.
In this Chamber last month, Mr Prodi, the President of the Commission, was indicating that yes, there are some things, which recent events, such as the Eurostat affair, have revealed in relation to lack of information flow or responsibilities here and there. By 15 February 2004, we would like to see a document that refers to these particular types of items, informally completing the document we received from the Commission a few weeks ago.
Secondly I would like to turn to one particular aspect of this budget, which is external financing. One criticism I heard from Mrs Buitenweg is about why we as a Group have been asking for certain funds to be placed in the reserve. In comparison to many previous years, this year we have been extraordinarily modest in putting funds in the reserve because we want to see some indications in Afghanistan that action is being taken to try to solve the extraordinarily different problems of drug production. 70% of the drugs that arrive in Europe come from Afghanistan.
Mrs Buitenweg! I see you are supporting me in the Chamber. Perhaps under the circumstances I could refer to you as an honorary member of our Group! We are thinking about releasing this money as soon as the reserves are released. We have a letter from Commissioner Patten – you can ask Mr Garriga Polledo – saying that progress is on its way and therefore putting money in the reserve has actually been to some real purpose in that field.
In Iraq, as other Members have mentioned, we have seen some recent changes which will of course change the nature of financing in 2004. My Group looks forward to Commissioner Patten coming forward with the document which is meant to be looking at medium-term funding for Iraq. We believe that further funding could well be needed out of the 2004 budget for this purpose. The flexibility instrument is already in use, but it is for 2003-2004, and therefore some funds will remain should there be other causes which we have to finance, whether in Iraq or elsewhere.
The fundamental political point I would like to make here - and I believe it is a view shared in all parts of the House - is that we cannot continue to finance external policy simply by relying on goodwill when utilising the flexibility instrument. We have to be able, when we come to the next financial perspective, to think clearly what our priorities are and how are we going to be able to meet them. Some Members in the House in 1999 doubted whether we had enough funds in Category IV for external funding. We have been proved right in the operation of this and therefore when these negotiations open out in 2004, with the document from the Commission looking at this question of financial perspectives, we need to be clear that we have the funds necessary for our ambitions.
It seems to me that this is now going to be the big debate we will be holding next year when we have elections: a new Commission will be coming in and a new Parliament. What is the framework going to be for our financial perspectives over at least the five years from 2007 onwards? On the front page of the
today we see at least six Member States saying that they do not want to exceed 1% of GDP. Our message as a Group is: please do not decide, as governments, to sign up to actions which you then do not wish to finance, because it then makes the whole question of the running of this budget impossible.
In conclusion, when we come to the financial perspectives we are going to have to be very realistic and very coherent, but above all, let us make sure that when we have ambitions we have the means to achieve them."@en1
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