– (DE) Mr President, Commissioner Piebalgs, ladies and gentlemen, as we speak the Kyoto targets are being discussed in Washington and I believe the UN is right to discuss these global targets and to set targets as part of a top-down strategy, as well as creating the necessary instruments.

39. Acknowledges that both shared and centralised management require specific rules and that the top-down approach of FP7 and CIP and the bottom-up approach of Structural Funds each have their own merits; underlines, however, the need to harmonise the rules, procedures and practices (eligibility rules, standard unit costs, lump sums, etc.) governing different instruments and to ensure better coordination (of schedules of calls for proposals, themes and types of calls, etc.); calls on the Commission to explore possibilities to that end, without prejudice to competences of Member States and regions under shared management, while encouraging an administrative culture that promotes a pluridisciplinary approach via common cross ...[+++]-sectoral strategies in a range of subject areas, and via continuous dialogue between different policy communities in order to strengthen policy coherence; calls on the Commission to simplify the administration of the funds concerned and asks for the specific strengths of both support pillars to be promoted at the same time as making use of synergies and simultaneously increasing their impact;

39. Acknowledges that both shared and centralised management require specific rules and that the top-down approach of FP7 and CIP and the bottom-up approach of Structural Funds each have their own merits; underlines, however, the need to harmonise the rules, procedures and practices (eligibility rules, standard unit costs, lump sums, etc.) governing different instruments and to ensure better coordination (of schedules of calls for proposals, themes and types of calls, etc.); calls on the Commission to explore possibilities to that end, without prejudice to competences of Member States and regions under shared management, while encouraging an administrative culture that promotes a pluridisciplinary approach via common cross ...[+++]-sectoral strategies in a range of subject areas, and via continuous dialogue between different policy communities in order to strengthen policy coherence; calls on the Commission to simplify the administration of the funds concerned and asks for the specific strengths of both support pillars to be promoted at the same time as making use of synergies and simultaneously increasing their impact;

If we scrap everything we have achieved in this area in order to speak with one voice as part of a top-down strategy, what we are in danger of seeing, instead of a competently conducted fight against poverty, is a whole caravan of white elephants invade the African continent.

The second approach to our response to rural Canada and the needs of rural Canada is that it is absolutely essential that we take a bottom-up and not a top-down approach.