Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, like many others, I want to begin by thanking the rapporteur, Mr Costa Neves. The cooperation has been really good. As ‘shadow rapporteur’ for the Group of the , I have also encountered a very constructive attitude, and that is something for which I am grateful. By this time, almost all practical proposals from Parliament have been dealt with, and I must therefore concentrate on a number of more theoretical points of view. The budget is the ultimate expression of democracy and social development. It is through the budget that we decide that our public institution needs to use tax revenue in order in some way to influence society, and it is the EU’s budget that is relevant when it comes to transnational European issues. It is always difficult to strike a balance between, on the one hand, the desire to do important things and, on the other, the need to respect budget discipline and to ensure that taxpayers genuinely get value for money. In the EU, this balancing act is unusually complicated due to the fact that it has to be carried out both by two budget authorities in tandem and by each authority in its own right. In the case of the Council, it even has to be performed within each and every one of the fifteen governments. Unfortunately, the problem is often that, with one voice – for example that of the agricultural and foreign ministers – the Council pledges a whole lot of money to, for example, agriculture and the fight against BSE and foot and mouth, to the transformation of poor regions, to fishing fleets, to the Balkans and to Afghan refugees etc, while, with its other voice – that of the finance ministers – it says no to increased expenditure. The problem is not made any easier by the fact that those who promise aid do not so often ensure that the Commission, which is to implement all these measures, has the resources needed to turn the promises into a reality. There are often considerable commitments made, but the level of implementation is low and the funding insufficient. In spite of this criticism, I believe that, for the most part, taxpayers get value for money. I am an MEP for Sweden, the EU’s most Eurosceptic country and, at the same time, the country in which the individual taxpayer contributes most money to the EU. This situation means that it is not always so easy to persuade people to believe that the money is in actual fact used well. The myth of the EU as a hopeless colossus is so strong that I am scarcely believed at home when I say that, even for Sweden, the net cost of the EU amounts to only 1 per cent of the State budget, that the budget is not increasing in real terms and that it is implemented in such a way that the Swedish exchequer gets back a large part of its contribution each year. Indeed, a tenth of the whole budget is in practice paid back to the Member States. I believe, as I say, that we get value for money, but there are still a lot of shortcomings. We need to do quite a lot in the future in order to convince people that the funds are being properly used. First of all, I believe that we must simplify the budget procedure itself and ensure that it is made more transparent. The new budget regulation and activity-based budgeting should contribute to this. Secondly, we must speed up internal reform. We have certainly now placed a number of services in the reserve, but the aim of this is not to slow down, but to force the pace of, reform. I am also convinced that, as Commissioner Schreyer pointed out in his speech, we are going to have to make the budget more flexible and increase our ability to respond to new events. In order to achieve this, I also believe that a new spirit of cooperation is needed between the two branches of the budgetary authority. Most obvious, perhaps, are the deficiencies in category 4, that of external expenditure, to which the Council has added new expenditure year after year on, for example, aid to Kosovo and Serbia, new fisheries agreements etc. This year, we have had far-reaching discussions on assistance to refugees, the Global Health Fund and other efforts to combat AIDS etc. In both 2000 and 2001, we solved this problem by means of the flexibility instrument, which gave us a further EUR 200 million per year. The problem this year is that the programmes for Kosovo and Serbia which necessarily gave rise to this flexibility instrument must still be implemented at a high level but without our being able this year to use the flexibility instrument’s EUR 200 million. In spite of this, the Council will prevent us from using those funds that are not needed for the fisheries agreements, and that is something I do not understand. Why are we not allowed to use them when we, in actual fact, have major costs for the programmes to which we have agreed? This does not hold water. With this policy, the Council is forcing us to do something I should preferably have liked us to avoid, namely to say no to a proportion of the major expenditure on the Balkans, even if we are obviously using this to protect the most sensitive areas, that is to say Serbia and Kosovo. Let us conduct an open dialogue in this area, characterised by trust. We understand the Council’s priorities when it comes to the Balkans, AIDS etc, but then we should also ask for a certain amount of understanding for the fact that we cannot prioritise away all the issues closest to our hearts. We want to rescue aid to the Balkans. Let us get around the negotiating table.

Political group: PSE