Göran Färm, rapporteur for the opinion of the Committee on Budgets. – (SV) Madam President, the Committee on Budgets emphasises a few points in its opinion. Firstly, we need to learn from our past mistakes and, particularly in North Africa, create a more unified role for the European Union, where we can avoid old European colonial powers preferentially safeguarding their own national interests.

Secondly, this means that we must focus more on civil society, democracy and good governance in order to create an open, democratic and non-corrupt social system. Thirdly, we need to find an effective and transparent support model in which we avoid creating instruments that overlap with those we already have. Even though we strongly support the specific aim of the new endowment for democracy that the Commissioner mentioned, we have a few question marks when it comes to the structure.

Fourthly, there will obviously be a strong focus now on our neighbours in the South, but we must not jeopardise a reasonable balance in relation to the support for our Eastern neighbours who want to keep their EU perspective alive. It is important that we do not let them down in this respect.