Mr President, we are now into the last stage of the budget for 2000. It is the first European budgetary discussion in which I am involved, and I must say that in my inexperience, I have grossly overrated the rationality employed to spend taxpayers’ money. The first party at which we can point the finger must surely be the Council of Ministers. They were so much more concerned with their own national purses than about the people in Kosovo that previous pledges were fiddled. In Berlin, a protocol was concluded, on the basis of which financial perspectives could be adapted if so necessitated by the reconstruction of Kosovo. At two Conferences of Donors, the European Union committed itself to contributing EUR 500 million. According to a report by the World Bank, it is possible to absorb this amount. A frontload approach (a great deal of money in the first couple of years) is said to be the best way of kick-starting the economy. The EUR 500 million are necessary, they have been promised and they can be found within the current budget. It is, however, necessary, so as to prevent developing countries from being presented with the bill, to use margins from categories other than foreign expenditure. There is, for example, a generous margin in category 1 B, rural development. Proposals to apply this margin and offer Kosovo prospects for the future, were not even considered by the Council. The hard lesson of the significance of conflict prevention, the Berlin Protocol, ... rational arguments were discounted when the national ministers defended the agreements of Berlin selectively and undoubtedly worked out in the mean time how much unused funding from the margins they would recover at the end of the year. Surrealism reached yet another level when negotiations were held regarding this couple of hundred million when Commission President Prodi committed the European Union to the tune of EUR 5.5 billion in political terms for the reconstruction of the entire Balkans. It is to the credit of the rapporteur that these statements did not remain airy fairy but were given substance in a declaration. I would explicitly like to extend a warm thanks to Mr Bourlanges for this. This declaration has in the past couple of weeks been much deliberated and has even today created a lot of dust. I believe that this will be topic of conversation tomorrow and the day after that. It is a rather awkward situation. It is not exactly a model of a rational decision but rather a case of panic stations. I personally, for example, support Ajax but they manage to marry beauty, speed and tactics rather well. Since it is as yet unclear what exactly we will be voting on on Thursday, I will indicate which issues meet with agreement within my group. Firstly, until such time as figures are available regarding the needs in Kosovo, I will keep referring to the World Bank’s report and the EUR 500 million which have been pledged. I am prepared provisionally to discuss a maximum amount which is under this amount, but I would like to receive confirmation that the multiannual programme which is to be drafted in April, is to apply to the entire Balkan region, including Kosovo, and will run from 2000 to 2006, inclusively. If necessary, Kosovo should receive the whole share, even as early as the year 2000. The second point is that the timeframe for allocating funds to Kosovo should also make it possible for the entire share to be spent wisely. To me, this means that April seems to be the ultimate date for reaching a decision. The timeframe, together with the possibilities of adapting the present budget, should this appear necessary in April, are therefore crucial to the Group of the .

Political group: Verts-ALE