New commissioner's wise cautiousness. The orientation in favour of safeguarding the common agricultural policy (CAP) and cohesion policy as essential elements in European construction ensures their appropriate future budget funding but also raises an obvious problem: how should the new action highlighted in the Commission's draft document, “Reforming the budget, changing Europe”, be funded? The new European commissioner for the budget, Janusz Lewandowski, (he is expected to begin his role before the end of the month) asked MEPs to be realistic: a significant increase in the European budget cannot be expected because member states are faced with often substantial national deficits which they are obliged to bring down, and it is “easier for them to reduce their contributions to the European budget than decrease national spending” (EUROPE 10053). It should not be forgotten that it is the Commission itself that firmly insists that member states rigorously respect the rules of the stability and growth pact and rapidly reduce their deficits.
Spending should be protected and accountable. The call for rigour should not get in the way of Community spending on the CAP and cohesion policy because these are in fact areas of spending that bring down national spending because they facilitate rationalisation and real savings. Renationalisation of CAP funding would provoke a hike in national spending in prosperous member states and a reduction in assistance and investments in less prosperous member states where agricultural renewal would find itself blocked. Similar considerations are valid in connection with cohesion policy.
The expansion of Community spending on other action, including research and innovation, should therefore be examined, and while ensuring that there is no actual reduction in current funding, reflection on the question should not be avoided either. A far-reaching rethink on European spending is required for these fields, particularly on the support given to big industry. The next definition of the EU's new financial perspectives would provide an appropriate occasion for beginning this procedure.
The financial crisis proved to what extent the financial community is so radically divorced from the general interest and is concerned with only one thing: making as much money by any means possible. The efforts that the same circles are currently making to win back their former freedom of action, to oppose discipline and controls, to pursue their personal enrichment without any understanding of the difficulties experienced by others, illustrates to what point we have nothing positive to expect from them; constraint is the only appropriate language. The world of industry obviously offers a clear advantage: industry makes products and creates jobs. How can we fail to see this difference? The majority of industrial leaders, however, have neither a moral conscience nor a sense of what is in the general interest that is very much higher than that of the bankers. Their behaviour regarding corporate relocations and closures etc is proof that the rule of maximum profits is as acute among them as it is elsewhere. They are also particularly sensitive with regard to the question of public subsidies: as soon as they get a whiff of them, they can dream of nothing other than using them to their own advantage. These comments do not imply any kind of sympathy for the ideas of the far-Left in support of nationalisation of the economy or hostility to all competition: the armed groups that take power in different places then prove themselves incapable of producing anything else but conflicts to hang on to their power. Let's cite just one case where innovation, technological ability or knowledge have progressed; even food self-sufficiency, if it existed, would be destroyed.
A valid system if…Conclusion: if effective competition was ensured, if the abuses were duly outlawed and punished, if the quality and origin of products was appropriately ensured, the European democratic and liberal political system would not be in need of revolution. From a general perspective, European and national elections prove one after another that the people support and accept this system.
Nonetheless, it has to be reformed: the benefits of the wealth produced must be better distributed and both the world of finance and big industry must be subject to greater controls - indeed, the world of finance needs rigorous controls. The Community budget in the future must correspond to the results of the reflection carried out. If they are better controlled, agricultural policy and cohesion policy will benefit all citizens. Some of the new spending orientations must still prove that they do not definitively result in increasing the imbalance between the income earned from wages and that coming from other activities. Everything should be looked at and the future budget should take the results into account.
(F.R./transl.fl)