Sidonia Elżbieta Jędrzejewska, rapporteur. – (PL) We are meeting, today, to talk about the European Union budget for 2011. The year 2011 is an exceptional budgetary year, for several reasons. Above all, 2011 is the fifth year of the multiannual financial framework for 2007-2013, so we already know a good deal about how this multiannual framework is being put into effect, which parts have been a success and which have not, and many programmes are already at a very advanced stage in terms of their life cycle.

Meanwhile, much has happened in the European Union, for we have adopted the Treaty of Lisbon, which imposes or assigns new fields of competence to the European Union. I will permit myself, here, to mention several of these, in particular, those which are expensive, namely the new fields of competence in the areas of policy for combating climate change and energy policy. It also opens up new fields of competence for the European Union on the global stage, so we are talking, here, about the establishment of Union diplomacy, and there are new competences in terms of space research and in terms of sport and tourism. Unfortunately, none of these new roles is accompanied by appropriate financial means. It is somewhat true to say that the European Union has new ambitions and new plans but does not necessarily have the new financial resources needed to put these plans and ambitions into effect. This, then, is what 2011 is like.

In the opinion of the European Parliament, the European Commission programmed operations wisely in its draft and allocated appropriate resources for 2011. The Council – we have already discussed this, here – has reduced those resources. I would like, briefly, to present what happened in the Committee on Budgets during our reading. As a reminder: the new Treaty of Lisbon also introduces a new budgetary procedure. We no longer have two chances. Neither the Council nor the European Parliament now have two readings. We have only single readings, which is why both arms of the budgetary authority need particular effort and discipline, because, in fact, each of us has only one chance. I repeat: we no longer have two readings.

We are going to vote tomorrow, and we are going to give attention to the position drawn up by the Committee on Budgets. It is important to emphasise that what the Committee on Budgets has drafted is a position which respects the multiannual financial framework. In contrast to previous years, the European Parliament will adopt its reading, which does not go beyond, in terms of planned amounts, the multiannual financial perspective. This position is innovative, but is equally a position which includes and takes into account the concerns and the situation in which the Council finds itself. The situation where, in Council, seven Member States rejected the Council’s position has not escaped Parliament’s notice. We have listened to and taken into account the fears of certain Member States and of the Council as such. We have taken careful note of the Council’s position, and therefore Parliament’s reading is disciplined and does not go beyond the multiannual financial framework. On the other hand, however, we cannot, of course, remain indifferent in the face of the facts about which I spoke earlier, namely, that we have new areas for which the European Union has to take up responsibility, but that these areas do not have appropriate financial provision. What is more, the Council has committed itself to a considerable number of measures related, for example, to bananas, with compensation for banana producers associated with the ITER and other programmes, which require new financial resources but which have not been provided with new financial resources. Apparently, they are to be financed from current resources. It is here that, as the European Parliament, we have doubts.

What we would also like to communicate in our reading is, above all, to emphasise once again the triangle of priorities, the triangle related to youth, education and mobility. The European Parliament has been saying since March that this will be our list of priorities for 2011 and that we would like those budget lines which favour youth, education and mobility to be appropriately funded, so that resources will also be found for innovative undertakings in the field of mobility, youth and education. The same concerns programmes related to research and innovation. We know there are not sufficient means in the current financial framework, which is why we have made the painful – although, in our opinion, essential – cuts to the ITER programme. I would very much like this reading of Parliament to be seen as disciplined, but also as a reading which enables the financing of the European Union’s commitments for 2011.