Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, I would like to echo the congratulations extended to the rapporteurs. Our group will support your proposals for the most part. However, we oppose the ’s strategy, which submitted a proposal out of the blue in the Committee on Budgets yesterday, to reject the budget. In view of the pressing problems we face in Serbia and Kosovo, we do not believe this strategy to have any serious political intention. Even though we endorse many of the points of criticism directed at the Council, it is clear that a strategy of this kind would lead to a politically untenable confrontation and undermine the credibility of the European institutions. Like the budget before it, Budget 2001 had almost insoluble conflicts to contend with: on the one hand the pressure of consolidation and cost-cutting policy, as agreed under the Interinstitutional Agreement, in order to secure the financing of the enlargement process, and on the other hand, the acute financing needs of the Stability Pact for the Balkans. This conflict is heightened further, in our view, by the Council’s policy of casually promising everyone aid, and constantly intensifying internal conflicts by making promises of money without thinking seriously about the financing implications. I must say that is how many people on the outside view the Council’s policy. Instead, Parliament is expected to honour these promises by repeatedly finding new ways to make cuts. In this way, Parliament’s political room for manoeuvre in the budget is being systematically undermined. We will end up being nothing more than the Council’s assistants in the implementation process. This situation cannot be allowed to continue in our view. However, there is no easy solution. It is a fact that the forthcoming round of enlargement will put the Community severely to the test. Financing is a balancing act between needs – financial requirements in the new Member States and financing opportunities for the donor countries – and there are limited public funds. Naturally there is a need to budget carefully, we support this and should not try to get round it. We are also aware that many projects and programmes are discredited owing to mismanagement. We urgently need a long- and medium-term strategy, so that important areas such as MEDA and the Stability Pact for the Balkans are not played off against each other. We fear that Parliament’s present proposal, which we largely endorse, will expose us to this risk. We fear that the flexibility reserve is probably not being used to finance MEDA, as it should be, but instead, is being employed, at the end of the day, to offset further financial need in Serbia. We hope to be able to develop a common strategy over the next few weeks in order to counteract this. We also urgently need a common strategy for improving management. This will entail a corresponding increase in staffing levels, and here too we are critical of the committee’s majority decisions. We fear that the majority of the committee members have used the wrong tactics. Demands for improved performance also imply a need for more staff. As far as we are concerned, linking the demand for improved performance with the demand to place staff in the reserve at the same time will not wash with the public. We are also critical of the decisions taken with regard to the LIFE programme. We are hoping that the majority of MEPs will have second thoughts about this on Thursday and vote accordingly, and that we will succeed in reclaiming LIFE from the reserve. And so finally, to recap: all in all we would like to thank the rapporteurs, Mr Ferber and Mrs Haug, for their valuable work. There are two or three points that we differ on, but we hope to reach agreement on them yet. Above all, we call upon the parliamentary majority to again think carefully about whether all the staff – i.e. all 400 posts – should really be placed in the reserve, or whether it would not in fact make sense to come to a different vote on this matter.

Political group: Verts-ALE