Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-03-29-Speech-3-151"
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"en.20000329.9.3-151"2
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"Mr President, I would like to start off by congratulating Mr Ferber on excellent guidelines. I welcome the clear orientation of the report to planning for enlargement. The drive towards efficiency is especially vital in the context of enlargement. It is important even at this early stage that we have a clear strategy on how the institutions will respond to the accession of new members. We need to be imaginative about how we address the issues of staffing and building requirements. The institutions cannot respond to enlargement by just adding an extra post here or an office there. We do not want a Lego approach to enlargement.
What we need is a major rethink about management of operations and that involves all the institutions exploring alternative ways and embracing new information technologies wholeheartedly. This is especially important in relation to linguistic support. I am totally in support of the idea outlined by Mr Ferber regarding the setting up of an interinstitutional recruitment office because I believe it will help reduce costs and reduce competition between the institutions in attracting new personnel. As everybody here needs to recognise, there are major limitations in relation to resources that will be available as a result of enlargement and there are implications for the financial perspective in relation to Category 5 expenditure.
However, these guidelines are not just about enlargement they are about policy direction for all the institutions next year. Therefore, greater accountability and transparency have to be top priority because the European citizen does not distinguish between the different institutions. All the other institutions have to undertake a fundamental review along similar lines to those proposed by the Commission’s reform agenda because what the European taxpayers want is the reassurance that they are getting value for money and that includes not just the institutions but also political parties, Members of Parliament and staff. Any changes have to be clearly justified and transparent.
Improvements and efficiencies need to be demonstrated by every institution and I believe that this can only be achieved through tools such as activity-based budgeting and thorough examination of current policies and systems and procedures. One of the biggest inefficiencies that we have is the location of EU institutions and if we want to be taken seriously we need to focus our work on one seat. I appreciate we have obligations under the treaties to two different locations but we should make sure that these are not expanded. Many of you are aware that the UK is reluctant to expand the scope of qualified majority voting but this is one issue where the UK would gladly see majority voting take place.
To conclude, our group’s priorities are that these guidelines are budgetary prudence, improving efficiency, more effective budgetary control, better use of resources and general improvements in services and management, so I call upon all the other institutions to take these on and implement these improvements vigorously."@en1
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