Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/1999-11-16-Speech-2-055"
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"en.19991116.4.2-055"2
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"Mr President, rapporteur, ladies and gentlemen, this fifth letter of amendment for the budget of 1999 is in accordance with the directives proposed in May in budgetary conciliation. The means of payment for the PHARE and TACIS programmes, for former Yugoslavia and for the macro-economic aid for Macedonia can now be increased, that is to say they can now be safeguarded. As such, account is also being taken of the negative effects that the Kosovo conflict and the Kosovo war had on the situation in Macedonia, among other things, and we can at last come up with the budgetary aid this country badly needs and that was promised back in the spring or summer.
In addition, this letter creates 15 new posts for OLAF and it goes without saying that I would like to address the questions that have been put to me here on the appointment of the director of OLAF. It is true: the independent monitoring committee – and I would like to place great emphasis here on the word “independent” in the context of the monitoring committee – picked out 11 candidates it considered suitable from the multitude of applications. The Commission’s nomination committee then made a selection and I can assure you that at some point today you will receive the list of candidates that the nomination committee deems to be suitable.
I believe that the procedure can be interpreted in such a way that naturally the Committee on Budgetary Control is at liberty, for its part, to conduct hearings of the 11 candidates and reach a decision. I very much hope that the Commission’s procedure and the one you use in your hearings produce similar outcomes. In view of the eligibility of the candidates on the list, I am optimistic that it will be possible to find a very good candidate to hold this difficult office.
I would like to turn again to the matter of carrying appropriations forward. Parliament had already transferred EUR 30 million less in the overall carry-over. Consequently, the rapporteur proposes increasing the PHARE programme by EUR 25 million now. Again, I can assure you, as I also did in the trialogue, that we support this amendment and request the Council to adopt it.
If this modified supplementary and amending budget is adopted, then it will be possible, in 1999, taking into account all the amendments, to make available and finance an additional EUR 670 million for the PHARE and TACIS programmes, for south-east Europe and other programmes, mainly from unused funds in the agricultural sector. All in all, I welcome the fact that it has been possible, on account of this reduction in expenditure, to increase funds in the external action sector.
Several of you have criticised the fact that carry-overs of this order of magnitude are being proposed, and indeed that it was feasible to do so. To this, I would say that surely the reality of budgetary policy is that there will always be developments in the course of a financial year, that is during the handling of a budget, that will debar full exploitation of all the budgetary lines. This does not signify a failure on the part of the Commission to accept Parliament’s decisions. I will make it my business to see that Parliament’s decisions are adhered to. Nevertheless, we will always be faced with situations in which one or other development debars full exploitation of the lines. I will inform you whenever it is possible to predict to what extent situations of this kind will arise, and I believe that what we must do then is to jointly consider neither freezing these funds, nor employing them, but rather reallocating them to precisely those areas where Parliament too agrees that this represents constructive use of these surplus funds. As I said before, I am absolutely convinced of what a positive development it was that since less money was needed in the agricultural sector, i.e. less money had to be spent, on account of market and pricing trends, this is now available for such urgent and important external action programmes as are detailed in the documents we have before us."@en1
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