Verbatim report of proceedings

Thursday, 24 March 2011 - Brussels

Explanations of vote

Text tabled : A7-0058/2011

  Maria do Céu Patrão Neves (PPE), in writing. – (PT) I voted in favour of this report on the general guidelines for preparing the 2012 budget. This is a budget for 2012 under the auspices of stronger economic governance, the European semester mechanism and the Europe 2020 objectives to encourage employment.

Given that the Europe 2020 Strategy should help Europe to recover from the crisis and emerge from it strengthened through smart, sustainable and inclusive growth, based on the EU’s five top objectives – namely by promoting employment; improving conditions and expenditure for innovation, research and development; meeting our targets in the areas of climate change and energy; improving levels of education; and promoting social inclusion, in particular by reducing poverty – I agree with the recommendations presented in this report, in order to fully attain these five objectives.

I also agree with the rapporteur that there must be consistency between the achievement of these goals and the funding allocated to them, and the new mechanism for enhanced economic governance in the EU should be an opportunity to study how best to accomplish these five objectives.