Mister President, amending budget 4 proposes that hundreds of millions of euros should be reallocated. This newcomer had to make up her mind on the matter based on this little piece of paper. It seems to me that that is not an exercise to be repeated. The proposal provides for the reallocation of commitment appropriations to the value of EUR 137 million, 30 million of which is for Turkey, largely for relief action in the form of temporary accommodation now that winter is on its way, emergency aid in other words. Yet only 15 million in payment appropriations is being reserved, and under certain conditions at that. Therefore, we can expect another amending budget soon. Otherwise, companies and organisations are going to have to wait rather a long time before they are paid. There will have to be another amending budget for Kosovo, too. 30 million is now being released in payment appropriations, but we need 50 million. Plugging holes and robbing Peter to pay Paul creates a lack of transparency in relation to the budget and also compromises budgetary authority, a point clearly made by Mrs Dührkop Dührkop. Turning now to the content of amending budget 4, the original proposal provided for a reduction in the amount spent on co-operation with Latin America and Asia. This was certainly unacceptable as far as we were concerned. What we want is to see that this money is actually spent, and to see the Commission do its best, put its shoulder to the wheel, create the posts and ensure that the money is indeed spent on those things that the budgetary authority intended it to be spent on. Our group welcomes the fact that, as Mr Wynne said, the Council has certainly been quick to take up the Committee on Budgets’ idea and to look into the agricultural guarantee fund’s underspending. But soon, when the time comes to deal with Budget 2000, the same discussion will start up again. Once again, the Council and Parliament will have to reach agreement on expenditure on external activities, and the reconstruction of Kosovo will feature here again, too. It is likely, under these circumstances, that the Council will place the money set aside for co-operation with Latin America, Asia and Africa, in jeopardy for good. Cutbacks are also being made in spending on projects for furthering the peace process in the Middle East, and on projects for reintegrating demoralised soldiers and refugees into society. The support for NGOs is on the decline. I want to take the opportunity now to say that the Green Group will not support this. Consequently, some of the 500 million needed for the reconstruction of Kosovo will be borne by those countries for which the European Union is providing development assistance. We do not believe that to be fair. The Green Group does not support the short-sighted slogan: “I want my money back”. We want to ensure that the people of Europe get value for their money, and we are quite prepared to discuss making cutbacks in, or abolishing, aid programmes that are not going well. But the 10% linear reduction, the drip-feed method, shows that there has been no serious weighing up of priorities. Kosovo is a special case. Even at the time when the Financial Perspective was being discussed, people said that it would probably be necessary to increase spending in category 4 for the purposes of the reconstruction work there. I think we are indeed going to have to lay the Interinstitutional Agreement on the table for a short and limited period of time. In view of this discussion, I would like to remind you that one of the matters we are dealing with this week concerns actually giving back 1.6 billion in payment appropriations to the Member States. Surely it would not be an insurmountable problem to devote part of that surplus to Kosovo.

Political group: Verts-ALE