Mr President, the draftsman of the Committee on Regional Policy obviously has a fairly easy task with regard to the Structural Funds - in particular the Regional Fund - because they were fixed at Edinburgh in 1992 and I am glad to say have been respected by the Council and Commission.
The 1995 draft budget presented by the Council respected these agreements and so it was a rather nasty surprise when the Regional Committee found that the rapporteur for the Committee on Budgets was talking about freezing Structural Funds. I hope that problem is now resolved. The Regional Committee, of course, regrets that action and considers it a dangerous precedent.
I wish to remind the House that the Structural Funds are aimed at assisting less prosperous and peripheral regions in the Community, the unemployed and deprived groups. They are a mechanism for regulating the market.
The Regional Committee was also somewhat surprised to find that the Committee on Budgets had subdivided the Community initiatives into individual programmes. However, we do not object to the greater transparency that should result from this change.
We are glad the Committee on Budgets supported the restoration of lines for business innovation centres, interregional cooperative operations, regional measures and studies, but regret the reference to urban studies was deleted. We are sorry they did not see fit to accept the proposal for two new lines dealing with subregional disparities in development and the effects of low research and technology spending in less developed regions. Fortunately, an amendment from the rapporteur himself on long-term unemployment takes up quite a number of those points.
Finally, we are especially glad to see a considerable increase in funding for the international funds for Ireland and we support the efforts of Mr Dankert as the rapporteur to ensure that the Committee of the Regions has a budget that enables it to function effectively and achieve an appropriate level of independence from the Economic and Social Committee.
