Mr President, Commissioner, today’s debate on these three much-needed programmes finds us seeking a common legal base for the areas of culture, education and youth. We have had a concertation procedure – I am grateful for the very fine support we got from the Committee on Budgets in that – and now we have some fairly substantial financial resources at our disposal. We could, of course, do with more – these are, after all, areas in which we are dealing with the public, and in particular with young people – but we can be satisfied with what we have. As far as my own area is concerned, I can tell you that EUR 77 million for the action programme for educational institutions is not a trifling amount, but, again, we could do with more. Within all three of these areas there are institutions and associations that are, putting it in the broadest possible terms, educational and cultural ambassadors for Europe and which promote awareness of Europe’s common cultural heritage. For years, often with the help of this House, all these organisations have been doing their work. Without them, Europe’s soul would atrophy even more than it is apparently slowly doing now. I am especially glad that Mrs Iivari has been able to gain acceptance for the idea that cultural institutions should be able to retain their subsidies, at least for a transitional period of two years. Among other things, this is an acknowledgement of these organisations’ work. They can then prepare themselves for the applications they will have to make in response to future invitations to tender. It is at this point that I would like to stress that we MEPs are of course closer to the public than are those who sit in the Commission in Brussels, and so it is a fact that we are more aware of what the public needs. There are three points I would now like to make. As for the first, I would like to take this opportunity to shed more light on the Financial Regulation. Under no circumstances must the lawyers’ mania for regulation be allowed to obstruct our striving for greater transparency and efficiency in our political work on the ground, and I know that the Commission suffers from it just as much as Parliament. The Council, having absolutely no interest in such things, does not, but the problem is that we have the impossible task of defending these things on the ground. Let me just say, with reference to this, that this Financial Regulation and the Commission have now – to take just one example – wrecked the network of Europe Houses that has existed for 50 years. There is a place for that in this debate. I also want to point out that in respect of neither 2003 nor 2004 has the Commission been able to pay to this network the sums of money that this House allocated to it. It is refusing to do so. It is not Mrs Reding who is to be blamed for this, but others; the point simply has to be made that it is the Commission’s fault. It may be that the Financial Regulation that we now have was necessary. The only thing is that it cannot stay the way it is. We have to recognise that a rigorous, not to say fundamentalist, interpretation of this Financial Regulation gives rise to a bureaucracy that distances the public even further from the EU. How are members of the public meant to submit applications if they have to get a consultant to do it for them? It is scarcely credible that all these things should have become so complicated. We must not allow ourselves to be taken hostage by a sort of budgetary imperialism. We should make a real attempt at changing something, and, in the new parliamentary term, join with the Committee on Budgets in finding a new approach. We are neither an assembly of managers nor a board of directors seeking the maximum in bureaucratic efficiency. Rather than being either of those things, we are a political assembly, and our principal task is to respond to the European public’s desires and needs. It is for that reason that I believe we have to make it our business to ensure that money is spent properly, but we must not allow ourselves to be tied into a corset that nobody will find it easy to get out of. My second point is that we expect more from the soul of Europe, and so future budgets need to take more account of education and culture. The third, Commissioner, has to do with the new generation of educational and cultural programmes that you want to speak about today. My expectation of this new generation of programmes is that they should include manageable instruments, by which I mean action at Community level that is capable of being practically implemented, equipped with operational and financial resources in line with what the public want. Everything we do must focus on the public, and let me once again stress that they must not be used as a justification for bureaucratic machinery.

Political group: PPE-DE