European parliament (1): unvaried funding for agriculture The European Parliament said the EU’s agricultural budget will need to be maintained also in the coming years, but it is necessary to prevent frauds to this regard. “To avoid misuse of public money – the EP stated in a resolution endorsed in Brussels’s plenary – direct payments should be reserved for “active farmers”, i.e. those who actually use their land for production”. The EU27 Assembly conveyed its position for the next long-term budgetary period, running from 2014 to 2020. MEPs want to keep the EU agriculture budget unchanged until 2020 “to so that farmers have incentives to provide secure food supplies, environmental protection, create new jobs and provide for a competitive EU farming sector”. The Commission will present its draft legislative package in the late autumn and Parliament will co-decide – together with the Council – on the final content of the legislation. “The vote sends a clear, strong signal to the commissioner” for Agriculture Dacian Ciolos, “and I hope the Commission will bear in mind what we have put into the report and incorporate it in the final legislative proposal”. MEPs underline several points: to support “greening measures”, to use modern, environmentally friendly techniques, to provide high-quality food, to ensure that that Agricultural funding is distributed more fairly among Member States, to guarantee security of milk supplies for milk products even after 2015. The current quota system is to be scrapped in 2014. European Parliament (2): ensuring regional development To enable poor regions to catch up and all regions, including frontier ones, “to deploy their economic and innovative potential in line with the EU 2020 strategy” for competitiveness and employment. The EU Parliament, gathered in plenary session, set these two major goals by voting on a set of proposals asking that the EU’s “cohesion policy budget for 2014-2020 at least equal the current one” (2007-2013). In four non-legislative resolutions on regional development, Parliament seeks to defend the architecture of EU structural funds. In a debate that took place earlier, MEPs took a stand “in favour of a cohesion policy that is effective, ambitious and founded on solidarity”, which, as affirmed by one of the rapporteurs, Markus Pieper (DE), “has proven itself and provides impetus for growth and employment”. The vote on the Report on Strategy for Cohesion Policy post-2013 will take place in the next plenary session, of July 4-7 in Strasbourg. In the debate with regional policy Commissioner Johannes Hahn, MEPs stressed their firm opposition to “any attempt to transfer cohesion policy to national level or split it by sector, in particular via new thematic funds such as climate, energy or transport”. CoR: a commitment against territorial disparities “Regions and cities of Europe expect the EU to support their efforts to relaunch growth at regional and local level, to continue combating disparities between different geographic regions”. It’s the position that emerges from the Committee of Regions, consultative organ of the Community, that will hold in Brussels the Forum on “Industrial competitiveness: Global challenges, regional response”, next June 29-30, followed by the plenary. In particular, on June 30, Regional presidents and mayors will give their reaction to fresh EU budget plans and discuss spending priorities with Jutta Haug, Vice-Chair of the European Parliament’s Committee on Budgets. Other points on the agenda of next week’s Committee of the Regions plenary include a debate on the future of transport with Vice-President of the European Commission Kallas and “grassroots proposals to improve Europe’s environmental record”. A release by the CoR, drawn up on the eve of the plenary, states: “The European Commission recently unveiled ambitious plans to upgrade the continent’s transport network and make it more sustainable”. Antonio Costa, mayor of Lisbon, has prepared the CoR opinion on the issue, “supporting the overall goal to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 60% by 2050: This could be achieved through measures such as developing sustainable urban mobility plans for at least the larger cities, charging lorries for their environmental and health impact, and better integrating the different transportation systems and services”.
