Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-01-18-Speech-2-295"
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"en.20000118.10.2-295"2
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"Mr President, I must start by apologising that I cannot be nearly as dramatic as Mr Elles in my presentation. Can I first thank Mr van Hulten for this report. It is an excellent report. It would have been wrong for Parliament to have put in willy nilly every single recommendation that came from an external body because Parliament should have its own opinion on these issues. It is right for us to have a focused report which is what Mr van Hulten has produced. Can I invite Mr Elles not to put the cart before the horse. Yes, a lot of things were lost by the Socialists but they have not been won in plenary yet, and may I warn him that may not be the case tomorrow.
I should like to thank Commissioner Kinnock for all his efforts so far. He has been clear that his commitment has been to produce a radical change. Central to this is the attempt to produce and engender responsibility. It is clear that this needs to be developed at all levels and it needs to recognise the needs of each level within the Commission.
It is clear that we need to see a change in the Financial Regulation. That is important. We need to stop people passing the buck from one to another. Where failure is occurring within the Commission we need to hold people responsible. We need to be assured that consistent under-performance must lead to dismissal. This is natural elsewhere but it seems to be an extremely radical suggestion when it is put to the Commission.
We cannot continue with a situation where incompetence, mismanagement and fraud are costing the European taxpayers money and providing them with a poor service. I will give you one example of this. In the 1998 Court of Auditors report an exchange rate miscalculation in relation to Italian wine cost the taxpayers of Europe GBP 8 to 10 million. It is clear that is not acceptable. What happened to the person who was responsible for that miscalculation? We need a system which provides incentives and promotion and we need to see this promotion based on merit. We recognise that most of the officials within the Commission are extremely hard-working. But we also recognise that some of the practices are outdated. We look forward to reading the full Commission proposal on reform and we look forward to working out the detail alongside the Commission because, unlike what Mr Elles has just said, the Commissioner has made a commitment to discuss it with Parliament between now and 1 March.
We also need to recognise that people who live in glasshouses should not throw stones. The European Parliament has not exactly been clean in its approach to things throughout its history. We have a long way to go before we are perfect ourselves. Our own staff policy is outdated. Some of our working practices need radical reform. I hope that the European Parliament will be hanging onto the coattails of the Commission in this reform process.
We recognise the proposals on activity-based budgeting. We recognise that means discipline on the part of Commission officials and we recognise also that we have a responsibility within Parliament on discipline when we talk about negative priorities.
Finally, can I say that the Commission needs to work on its relationships with the public. European taxpayers need to be re-assured. The fate of the Commission, of the whole European Union, rests on delivery of this reform. That is the key issue, delivery of these proposals."@en1
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