Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, economic and social cohesion is at the very heart of the European Union. It offers the prospect of sustainable, harmonious and at the same time policentric development for the EU as a whole. The current debate is about the European Union of the future, be it a Union of 25 or even 27 Member States. This Union's commitment to integration will only continue to be credible if there is a corresponding willingness to jointly accept responsibility for the European social model in a spirit of solidarity. Our starting point has to be the assumption that the public's view of Europe does not depend on their regional and social position and is being tackled as a joint political exercise by all the Member States. We further need to assume that all our citizens are being given comparable opportunities and that we are not living our lives at the cost of the next generation. Nevertheless, it would be an illusion to believe that we have substantially more money available for this task than is currently the case. That is why it is our job to develop a concept which will function in line with the basic principles I have mentioned and which can at the same time manage with the same financial resources, in relative terms. While my report was going through its various stages in this House, I found I received different answers to these questions. One group says we should fight to make sure that everything is acceptable to everyone, and that everything will resolve itself later on. Others say that everything is acceptable as long as their own constituency does not lose its privileges. They demand solidarity for their constituency but they are not willing to participate in a wider solidarity. There are others again who do not accept the European social model anyway, and who welcome this dispute. And there are those who dare not tell the truth and accept the consequences. The truth is that we need to start to plan now if we want to make the first payments to the regions on 1 January 2007. No one can talk their way out of that one, because we know that two years are tight enough as it is. Everyone knows what the central issue is: how do we define the poorest regions of the European Union? The main principle of economic and social cohesion is that those areas that have the most catching up to do should receive the most support. However, as I see it, the concept of solidarity becomes meaningless if we repeatedly invent new criteria in order to ensure that our own constituency receives the support that is really intended for the poorest regions. In any case, that is short-term thinking. Widening the criterion in force and recognised up to now, according to which any regions with a GDP below 75% of the Community average are considered the most needy regions, will have a number of consequences. Firstly, it will mean that everyone will receive less money, that the phasing-out process will not continue, and that special regional support for the unemployed or for rural areas will no longer be possible. Another consequence will be that we will simply have to pump support into genuinely disadvantaged regions like those in Eastern Europe over a longer period. Another possibility is that constituencies that require intervention at present will suddenly become net contributors. The study by the German Institute for Economic Research indicates that this would happen in three years. The worst consequence of this plan and of this short-term thinking would be that it would mean the end of solidarity. In that case we would have nothing left at all, because we would have no plan and economic and social cohesion would be an empty cliché. I come from an Objective 1 region that would lose its status for statistical reasons if we strictly observed the 75% criterion, and yet I am convinced that generous phasing out would make it possible for that region to solve its development problems. If we in Parliament establish a cornerstone for the Structural Funds of the EU of the future, with clearly defined Objective 1 regions, we will on the one hand oblige the Commission to follow where we lead and on the other hand we will be issuing a challenge to the Council. I would like a roll-call vote on this tomorrow. There are two things on which we can agree. One principle we agreed upon was that of ‘one programme – one fund’. This is an effective concept for simplifying the management of the Structural Funds. We have also agreed to support the Commission's idea of tripartite contracts with the regions and Member States for the implementation of structural policy measures, so as to facilitate the participation of local stakeholders. I hope that this means we will be supporting an efficient and successful concept and not undermining solidarity within Europe. (Applause)

Political group: Verts-ALE