Text tabled : A7-0248/2010

  João Ferreira (GUE/NGL), in writing. – (PT) This report calls for the instruments needed to implement the budgetary provisions of the Treaty of Lisbon to be adopted as soon as possible. That means subordinating the Union budget even further to the needs of neoliberalism, federalism and militarism – the three basic axes of the European integration process that is under way, now enshrined and developed in this treaty.

Since our position in this regard is well known, we had no option but to vote against the report. We have always criticised the meagreness of the current multiannual financial framework, which has reduced the structural funds to 0.37% of the EU gross national income. That has resulted in cutbacks in social and environmental programmes and in the fields of research, education and culture.

We therefore advocate an increase in the funds it makes available and a reorientation of its objectives. We advocate a Union budget at the service of genuine economic and social cohesion, at the service of full employment with rights, investment and public services, environmental protection, cooperation and peace.

We therefore reject the view of the Union budget as an instrument at the service of the commercialisation of more and more aspects of social life, liberalisation, lack of job security, structural unemployment, external interventionism and war.