Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2010-05-19-Speech-3-347"
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"en.20100519.22.3-347"2
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"Mr President, I believe that today’s debate has shown and proved that Parliament can and should make a significant contribution to the development of the strategy. Because of my remit, I would like to thank Mr van Nistelrooij and Mr Cortés Lastra, in particular, for their reports. I thank also all those who have been intensively involved in this work because they will have a major say in the shaping of regional policy and because both reports have shown how important it is to consider all regions in Europe and that regional policy can and must be a policy for all regions, and that in future, it should be.
Both reports ultimately stress the positive impact of this measure. I would like to thank Mr Cortés Lastra, in particular, for this significant contribution and for pointing out what the Lisbon Strategy ultimately did deliver, despite all the criticism. It was, after all, not just the idea, but the subsequent implementation of the concept of earmarking that has made a significant impact here, especially in the fields of innovation and research.
Mrs Schroeder might consider this a bitter pill, but obviously you need to set a target. However, the regions that have local structures and individual project developers have had, and will have in future, the possibility of carrying out individual projects and achieving objectives under one general umbrella. Of course, we need points of emphasis and we need to set priorities, and that is the idea behind earmarking. However, we can achieve a great deal by using a bottom-up and a top-down approach at the same time.
In addition, the strategic report I recently presented on the reports of the 27 Member States concerning the state of implementation hitherto of the current programming period shows how sustainable and sensible earmarking actually has been, because EUR 63 billion of the EUR 93 billion allocated so far has been spent on Lisbon objectives, that is, for research, innovation, investment in training and, finally, on transport and infrastructure, in the broadest sense of those terms, as well.
Regional policy – and this was shown very clearly by the van Nistelrooij report – is a driving force behind innovation which is able to move things forward and to make and keep European society more globally competitive. It has been demonstrated that out of the more than 450 operational programmes, only 246 are focusing on research and innovation. This quite clearly shows that points of emphasis, such as research and development, are necessary and that that must remain the case.
For this reason, it was obvious in the current programming period that we should allocate just EUR 86 billion for this area, which is three times more than in the 2000-2006 period. However, we need to ensure better coordination of course, especially in the areas of research and innovation. There is no conflict between excellence, on the one hand, and a broad geographic spread, on the other. It must be our objective to promote brain circulation, not brain drain from some or many regions into a few. On the contrary, we need to ensure circulation of knowledge and of the people involved, particularly when it comes to research, innovation and development.
One of the major objectives should be, especially if we consider the next programming period, making a transition from a merely performance-based approach, which is to say, proper financial management, to a stronger result-targeted approach and perspective. That must be one of EU 2020’s major steps forward in comparison with Lisbon, one which really enables us to break down European objectives into national, regional and, ultimately, local objectives and thereby make the strategies tangible, visible and comprehensible.
One final comment: my understanding of regional policy is that it is investment policy, and by that I mean investment in all regions. Finally, all regions can benefit from successful investments made in individual regions because, we have to keep remembering that two thirds of the European exports of each individual Member State are destined for the European Union, to the 26 other countries. That means that if these countries are doing well, the 27th Member State will do well too. That must be one of our objectives. If today we also talk about how to tackle the crisis, then restructuring the budget cannot be our only concern, because growth constitutes a very important factor as well. That alone will provide our successful exit from the crisis in the long term and regional policy can make a significant contribution to that."@en1
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