Mr President, Commissioner, Mr President-in-Office of the Council, the budget determines the image of Europe and is the exponent par excellence of the European Union’s priorities. It is by means of the budget that the European Parliament can and must realise its ideals. Unfortunately, year after year, Member States have passed on most of their responsibilities of providing aid to Bosnia and Kosovo to the European Union. Each time, this was at the expense of European aid to the poorest countries. Year after year, Parliament has protected the interests of the poorest countries in the European budget, and with moderate success, even though this has not been enough. The European Commission struggled to come to terms with the extension of priorities, and this has led to unacceptable gaps in the implementation of commitments which were made under pressure of ever larger budgets for support to foreign aid and cooperation operations. Today, we are viewing the 2001 budget with the Serbian population very much at the forefront of our minds. There is no doubt that Europe has to make a crucial contribution to the reconstruction of Serbia, and hence to the stabilisation of the Balkans. The wish for peace and cooperation stability is of historic importance. But Europe itself is responsible for what is required to integrate Serbia in the democratic world. We cannot and must not present the bill for this to the poorest countries. Europe, operating today as a global player, must also do its bit to reduce poverty. This is not a situation in which we can opt for ‘either-or’; it is a ‘both-and’ situation, i.e. both aid to Serbia and the Balkans, and aid to the poorest countries. What does this translate into in terms of the 2001 budget? Even in 1999, as much as EUR 3.2 million was refunded to the Member States because those resources were not spent. Even our most generous estimates of what will be required for Kosovo and Serbia in 2001 will not exceed the EUR 3.2 million, far from it. So we have the means. The issue of the budget can thus be reduced to a purely political issue, and in subsequently weighing up the political options in an honest manner, the effectiveness of aid needs to be explored. If we do not want to pursue symbolic policies, we need to think and act in a result-oriented manner. In the final analysis, it is not about what we budget for, but rather about whether our money ends up at the right place and with the impact we had envisaged. This is where we hit a major problem. For years, the Commission has been unable to spend the funds we have budgeted for. For example, with regard to our aid to Mediterranean countries, we have a backlog which has accumulated over many years of budgets. The Commission is now working on activity-based budgeting, which will enable us to prevent these problems from happening again. In essence, activity-based budgeting should mean that for each budget line which is set up, the means are determined which are necessary to actually implement that budget line. Once we have assured ourselves that what we budget for can actually be spent, we will subsequently need to ask ourselves whether the aid actually ends up where it is needed the most. I am of the opinion that we need to make a mental switch. The budget which we determine mutually, must reflect our priorities, must be understandable to the citizen and must also be goal-oriented. We have therefore proposed that, where relevant, we should include concrete output targets in our budget lines. These will indicate what sectors, in our eyes, must benefit directly from the aid which is budgeted for in certain regions. This is why we have ensured that the aid for education and health care is doubled, and that is necessary to ensure that the aid ends up with the people who need it the most.

Political group: PSE