Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2009-10-20-Speech-2-338"
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"en.20091020.35.2-338"2
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"Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, the Swedish Presidency has criticised the Committee on Budgets for wanting to increase payment appropriations in the current circumstances. In practice, this refers to the execution of the EU budget. I consider the criticism absurd for a number of reasons. Firstly, the Council’s finance ministers have always withheld payments to such an extent that large parts of the EU’s budget are never executed. Instead, large sums are repaid to the Member States as rebates. That is absurd, because the commitments in the budget are there to be executed – not to be repaid to the Members. We are prepared to fight for this. The question therefore arises as to whether the Presidency’s policy is actually to make great promises in the form of commitments that are then never executed.
Secondly, this year, the arguments for this are even stronger than usual. We should be increasing the execution of Social Fund measures that concern job creation, skills development and other such measures, for example.
The Presidency’s criticism is directed not just at the European Parliament, but also at the Commission, because most of what we are doing concerns restoring the cuts in the Commission’s budgetary proposal that the Council wants to force through and, in addition, focusing on measures for job creation. I also note that the Presidency has criticised the fact that the Committee on Budgets is increasing certain administrative appropriations – while the Commission is criticising us for doing the opposite, namely for having accepted some of the Council’s cuts. Our abiding principle has been to increase those administrative appropriations that are needed to guarantee the execution of important policies – but not otherwise. This year’s budget debate looks set to become something of a battle between the Council and the Commission.
As regards the European Economic Recovery Plan, the EU’s budget is not of such magnitude as to be able to be used for Keynesian stimulus policy, but it can be used for certain small but strategic matters, such as the Recovery Plan. As we now have a high level of unemployment, it can only be a good thing to bring forward investments that were going to be made anyway and that help to bring Europe together into a genuine internal market – such as those relating to energy infrastructure. Nonetheless, almost a year after the Plan was launched, we still have no tangible proposals from the Council or the Swedish Presidency concerning where the money is to come from. We are open to discussion, but obviously it is pointless to take the money from other priority areas that also contribute to employment, lifelong learning or energy and climate development, for example.
It is a pity that the minister had to leave as I had a question for him. I will ask it anyway and perhaps he will respond by another means. The Swedish Presidency has stated that the strategy for the Baltic Sea area is one of its priority issues. At the same time, it has not proposed any financing for this strategy. I find that surprising, because it means that everything that needs to be done must be financed from other sources that have already been earmarked for other important objectives. There will be no net contribution to the Baltic Sea Strategy. In view of this, I wonder how the Swedish Presidency can claim that it sees the Baltic Sea Strategy as a priority. We want an allocation of EUR 20 million, equivalent to SEK 200 million. It is an important contribution."@en1
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