Mr President, a third of EU money is invested in funds for all kinds of development causes. According to my group, this is excellent if, as a result of this, deprivation within regions, towns and population groups is eliminated or if health and the environment improved. That is a question of solidarity and progress. But dishing out increasing amounts of money is no guarantee for improved spending. The local councils and regions where the money ends up have since gained practical experience. They find it is extremely difficult to spend the money on their most needy causes. Anything related to economic growth and infrastructure usually scores quite highly, but social goals and environmental causes often cannot count on approval. Since there is great uncertainty surrounding the way in which rules are interpreted, local councils and regions have now started to enlist the services of expensive bureaux. The task of these experts is to gauge to what extent European Commission officials would be prepared to approve plans. In some cases, I get the impression that it is not about solidarity or alleviating the most desperate problems, but about propaganda and upholding vested interests in exchange for the European Union’s blessing. It seems that the key goal there has become the construction and painting of propaganda panels advertising the fact that such and such a project has been co-financed by the European Union. Too much money is wasted on propaganda and investigation bureaux, consultation and control, and a great deal of money ends up back in the country where it was collected in the first place. After the planned accession of new Member States with their 100 million inhabitants, the prosperity level of which is at one third or two thirds of the average level of the current EU Member States, this squandering will generate even more protest. In the Committee on Regional Policy, Transport and Tourism, the Confederal Group of the was in agreement with the draftsman of the opinion, Mr Nogueira Román, on LEADER. He was right to point out that it is not a good idea to share out this funding between all rural areas. If there is a choice between investing in innovation projects or injecting most of the funding into bringing on deprived areas, we would opt for the latter as this does the most to benefit equality. After all, innovation in areas that have already grown prosperous is paying dividends even now and taking place without European funding. A second point where we need to focus our attention is the possibility of nepotism and abuse of power within regional and local councils. The emphasis is on local groups in which the authorities, non-profit-making organisations and profit-making companies join forces. The discussion has centred on the allocation formula to be applied. In this respect, one of the variants considered is reminiscent of the Dutch polder model, the structurally planned cooperation between government, trade unions and employers’ organisations. Let us not forget that elections for local councils and regional parliaments are held so as to represent the entire population. So, really, these bodies should already provide for a balance, and take into account the wishes of the union movement and environmental movement in the process. My group welcomes the fact that the union movement and environmental movement are expressly given their own roles to play, as their input in society is important in our view. This could prevent local governments that are functioning in a short-sighted or insufficiently democratic way from neglecting their duty of input from the very start. But the fact that we now fear abuse of power and nepotism indicates that, unfortunately, democracy is not fully functioning yet. One of the objections is that, due to the restricted role of the elected bodies, businesses gain more influence. As long as the economy does not weigh up the needs of all in a democratic way but is more concerned with making a profit for the benefit of a few, it is questionable as to whether democracy functions better under the rule of employers than under the rule of local councils. We believe in ‘one man, one vote’ more than ‘one share, one vote’.

Political group: GUE-NGL