Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-07-07-Speech-1-076"
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"en.20080707.16.1-076"2
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"Madam President, Mr President-in-Office of the Council, Commissioner, what should the budget for the European Union for the year 2009 look like, and what could it look like? We have been talking about this since the beginning of the year, and now we are about to embark on the second step by the European Parliament in this year’s budgetary procedure, which is a little different from those of previous years. This is due to the fact that we want to start preparing ourselves in a small way for the amended procedure after the Reform Treaty.
After the resolution on the Budgetary Framework and Priorities for 2009 in April comes our resolution ‘First reflections on the 2009 Preliminary Draft Budget and mandate for the conciliation’. This resolution was adopted unopposed by the Committee on Budgets and I hope very much that the plenary session will also take a unanimous decision on it, especially as the comments and suggestions from the specialist committees have been included in it.
What are we concerned with here? The title tells all. We assess the preliminary draft budget with which the Commission has presented us and find much in it to criticise. We do not see that the draft reflects budgetary truthfulness and budgetary clarity, that it is sufficiently transparent. We already know that that the Commission, too, has to cut its coat to suit the limited cloth of the medium-term financial framework. However, that does not entitle it to use creative budgeting techniques to create available margins.
Nevertheless, such techniques have been used – for example, the backloading of multiannual programmes; the fact that known and easily discerned needs for financing are not taken into account; and the non-budgeting of the Guarantee Fund estimated at EUR 200 million a year. We do not see that the Commission has reflected in the figures the political priorities it formulated itself in its Annual Policy Strategy. These are priorities that Parliament has vigorously supported, to wit the fight against climate change and the promotion of competitiveness for growth and employment, closely linked with the promotion of a sustainable Europe and of course the realisation of a common immigration policy.
Most importantly, we expected greater commitment to the fight against climate change. The Commission claims to have earmarked almost EUR 14 billion in the budget for the environment, but closer inspection reveals that, of this EUR 13.842 billion, EUR 13 billion is already allocated to the European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development, the Cohesion Fund and the European Regional Development Fund. This amount will therefore have to be supplemented.
We also need to do more in the area of competitiveness, mainly for small and medium-sized enterprises, but particularly for small enterprises. The first step was the Small Business Act. The 2009 budget should provide a specific SME facility available to SMEs, who must first sue for their debts. It is all very well to have laws that dictate that the 30-day time frame must not be exceeded, but how are SMEs supposed to implement them? Bridging loans under this facility can, however, prevent bankruptcy and job losses, and that is also in our interest.
I do not wish to address now the insufficient budgeting to meet the requirements of food aid, food security, Kosovo, Palestine, Afghanistan; indeed, of the whole of heading 4. My fellow Members will do that in a minute.
I only wish to tell the Council, whose representative is no longer here, unfortunately – I cannot understand why he would be present for the one-minute speeches but not when we start talking about the budget – that Parliament is fiercely determined to enter into true political dialogue with it. We want to implement the European priorities, and a proper budget is required in order to do this. After all, our European budget is nothing other than politics in the form of figures."@en1
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