ean Central Bank and by the governments of the 12 countries of the euro zone, Member States have not been able to mobilise the national resources required to obtain funding for this programme. As the saying goes, every cloud has a silver lining. 
Goudin, Lundgren and Wohlin (IND/DEM ),
    The report is aimed at amending what is known as the ARGO programme by enabling financial contributions to be made to national projects concerning the EU’s external borders. The June List supports the idea of cofinancing surveillance of the external borders, especially when enlargement eastwards has meant that financially weak Member States are hit by high costs for such surveillance.
The ARGO programme nonetheless contributes to achieving the EU’s objective of setting up, step by step, an ‘area of freedom, security and justice’. This means implementing a common policy of measures concerning visas, asylum and immigration, something to which the June List is opposed. These issues should be dealt with by the Member States themselves in their own national parliaments.
We are thus voting against the proposal. 
Pafilis (GUE/NGL ),
   . – The ARGO programme, which was decided in June 2002 in the run up to the Seville summit (renowned for its anti-immigration and repressive decisions), made provision for EUR 25 million to finance joint actions by at least three Member States in the field of guarding borders over a period of four years.
The appropriations were not taken up, not because there was disagreement on the orientation of the programme, but because the ruling order of each Member State of the European Union wishes (for the moment at least) to retain responsibility for its borders and to decide on the basis of its own interests how many immigrants it is in its interests to squeeze dry. Nonetheless, the Commission proposal to the Council under debate makes provision for doubling the original amount and even for financing the initiatives of each country individually, which clearly demonstrates the persistence of the 