Mr President, Commissioner, President-in-Office of the Council, as you know, my Group has unanimously decided to table a motion rejecting the draft budget for the year 2001. This is a truly extraordinary initiative, especially at first reading, and one that is bound to be unsuccessful, for in the present circumstances it cannot possible gain a majority of votes in favour. We knew as much when we took the decision, so why did we take it? Every man and every woman here needs to realise that unless we challenge the ultra-restrictive strategy that characterises the Council’s draft budget then, come 2001, we are going to find ourselves in a situation where we are not able to honour all our commitments to our partners in the Balkans, the southern Mediterranean and other developing regions of the world. We are going to be in some way forced to choose between these three priorities, even though they are identically legitimate and equally urgent, and this is not, in our view, acceptable. The Council’s decision to cut a quarter of the appropriations earmarked for the Balkans, even before the change in the situation in Serbia, to cut EUR 150 million of the appropriations intended for Euro-Mediterranean cooperation and more generally to cut all appropriations for cooperation with the South is taking us directly down this blind alley. How is it possible to formally receive President Kostunica at the European Council in Biarritz, to convene an extraordinary Council in Marseilles devoted to Euro-Mediterranean partnership and to make an urbi et orbi proclamation of the most noble aspirations, raising encouraging hopes among the people of Eastern Europe and the south of Europe, without, at the same time, providing ourselves with the means to fulfil these commitments? The budget is not the be all and end all, of course, but it does reflect the political will of the fifteen Member States. For all that, the same approach has been applied to the European Union’s internal policies. Jacques Chirac spoke lyrically, in this very Chamber, of the Europe of all citizens, male and female, yet the draft budget of the Fifteen envisages an absolute reduction in appropriations in chapters as important as social action, employment, education, training, youth, culture, audiovisual media and the environment. On some of these lines, even the amendments from the Committee on Budgets, although positive, fall short of the 2000 budget. This is true for employment, the environment and trans-European networks, and, as we have seen, the problem is even more critical as regards external actions. We must not allow ourselves to fall into this trap. The only way to get out of it is to demand that the financial perspective be reviewed, particularly Chapter 4. The Committee on Foreign Affairs, Human Rights, Common Security and Defence Policy has done so, and the President of the European Parliament clearly expressed the same views in Biarritz. Mrs Haug, the general rapporteur also attempted, last night, to amend her report in this respect in order to reflect the concerns expressed by my Group, and I must thank her for that. Had this amendment been adopted in its initial version, it might have started to deal the cards afresh, but the idea was rejected by the majority of the Committee on Budgets. So is the European Parliament therefore about to implicitly accept the Council’s position, no matter what it says? This is a blind alley, which my Group is not ready to go down. In this connection, I should like to refer to a crucial passage in the speech by the general rapporteur. Earlier, Mrs Haug quite rightly pointed out that the Council has refused to discuss a multiannual revision of the financial perspective and to continue like this, as she said, “is completely unacceptable.” So, what conclusions must we logically draw from this situation? Our motion to reject the Council text is specifically aimed at contributing towards highlighting, in good time, this key political problem on which, sooner or later, we shall have to deliver an opinion in order, in the long term, to match European projects with the resources needed to implement them. (Applause)

Political group: GUE-NGL