Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-05-17-Speech-3-037"
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"en.20060517.3.3-037"2
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".
Mr President, as far as the new financial perspective is concerned, we are definitely faced with both bad news and good news.
The good news is that we have overcome the 10-month impasse in talks on the issue, and that the multiannual planning of the European Union’s finances now has a solid basis. It is also good that this basis is EUR 4 billion higher than the Council’s proposal. The bad news is that the net contributors are still continuing to place restrictions on the Union’s development by means of spending cuts. We should still remember that during the seven-year period from 2007 to 2013 the European Union’s GNP is expected to increase by around 15%, while EU spending is set to increase by 2%. The good news here is that spending related to the Lisbon Strategy has been increased by EUR 2.5 billion, but there is bad news in that this spending will amount to barely EUR 74 billion compared with the EUR 371 billion earmarked for agricultural policy and natural resources, as well as the EUR 308 billion earmarked for cohesion policy. It seems a good thing that a review of budget implementation has been scheduled for the end of 2009, but such an early date for this review is not so good, as it may harm the new Member States, where the absorption of Union funds may not yet have reached the target level.
This review may thus be understood to be an attempt to enforce budgetary discipline and another reason for spending cuts. It is therefore good that we have the new financial perspective, but bad that it demonstrates so little economic solidarity and such little will to meet external challenges.
It would be in the interests of the European Union as a whole for the net contributors to contribute more generously. They would then reap the overall benefits from a higher growth rate in the beneficiary Member States. The competitiveness of the European Union will not increase if we continue to defend an outdated social model and expensive jobs. In this matter, blaming the new Member States or enlargement will not help. The Union’s economic problems have deeper roots, quite aside from political problems resulting from unfair and irresponsible comments directed at the governments of certain Member States. If a certain recent fan of Mao Tse-Tung, who is absent at present, for no apparent reason attacks the Polish Government as being fascist, his words doubtless hark back to Communist propaganda, which destroyed pluralism and democracy, and interpreted everything that was not Stalinism as fascism."@en1
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