Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2010-09-21-Speech-2-690"
| Predicate | Value (sorted: default) |
|---|---|
| rdf:type | |
| dcterms:Date | |
| dcterms:Is Part Of | |
| dcterms:Language | |
| lpv:document identification number |
"en.20100921.23.2-690"2
|
| lpv:hasSubsequent | |
| lpv:speaker | |
| lpv:spokenAs | |
| lpv:translated text |
"Mr President, Commissioner, including a few noble principles in the treaties and in the European Union’s varied legislation is no guarantee that they will actually be put into practice, as we know. Territorial cohesion – like economic and social cohesion, in fact – is a very telling example of that. What these objectives lack more than resolutions and strategies is a general political and macro-economic framework, as well as concrete measures to promote and implement them.
Unfortunately, the policies that the European Union has been pursuing have brought about not cohesion but greater asymmetries: economic, social and also territorial asymmetries. There is a very real risk that these asymmetries will become even greater in future, as a result of the even more restrictive implementation of instruments such as the Stability and Growth Pact and the serious constraints that it imposes. This is a very real risk, given the inadequacy of Union budgets, which fall far short of what is needed to put territorial cohesion and economic and social cohesion into practice. What is more, these funds are also often unfairly distributed.
Even though mountainous regions, islands and sparsely populated areas differ from each other in their own particular ways, they all struggle with a number of perennial difficulties and problems that they have in common. Some common policies have, I repeat, made these problems worse instead of solving or mitigating them. That is also the case with the common agricultural policy and its successive reforms, the profoundly negative consequences of which need to be addressed and corrected. The specific features of the socio-economic fabric of these regions and their productive systems make them vulnerable to the market deregulation that the EU has been pursuing.
We have made a number of proposals to remedy this situation and promote economic and social development in these regions. We need to help mobilise their intrinsic development potential by supporting local production, by stimulating local and regional markets, and by stimulating and increasing public and private investment in productive activities in order to maintain job levels and to create more jobs with rights and fair wages.
Nor can we forget that some of these regions, such as the island regions, often complement each other in terms of their production and markets. We must learn to make good use of such complementarity and enhance it. We must also recognise the added difficulties they face in accessing Union programmes and financing in areas such as research and development. We have to apply positive discrimination to these regions to improve their access.
A topic discussed here today – the prevention of natural and man-made disasters – is also relevant. We must acknowledge the fact that these regions are more vulnerable to disasters and that disaster prevention needs to be reinforced, as the report we adopted here today points out.
Once again, we sound a warning that we have voiced on several occasions: these regions, especially the outermost regions, must be kept among the convergence targets so as not to aggravate a series of structural weaknesses from which most of them still suffer, as in the case of the autonomous regions of Madeira and the Azores in Portugal."@en1
|
| lpv:videoURI |
Named graphs describing this resource:
The resource appears as object in 2 triples