Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-05-16-Speech-2-017"
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"en.20000516.2.2-017"2
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"Mr President, I would like to congratulate the rapporteur on the excellent work that he is doing for our House in terms of getting value for money out of our budget. It is not right that we should be expecting the Commission to do a whole range of things in putting their House and their budget in order unless we also take the same kinds of rigorous steps. The approach which has been taken is absolutely correct, not only in making sure that we do not simply give money away if we have a little spare in the budget, but also where we have asked the Secretary-General of Parliament to come forward with a number of reports: for example, in paragraph 6 of the resolution where we have asked the Secretary-General to look at and identify job needs in the same way as the Commission so that we can match job needs to the staff which we have available in the longer term. That quite clearly is a way of long-term planning which is very sensible at this stage of Parliament's life.
There are three things which I would like to emphasise in particular in this Parliament Budget 2001. The first is a plea from an individual parliamentarian that we should make sure that we have a date firmly fixed for the second network computer in our offices. It is a matter of frustration for many of us that our staff can access the net with their computers, of course, Parliament's computers, but if we as parliamentarians bring in our own computers, we do not have a place to plug them in and work effectively. It is important to have a date when this facility will be available to us.
Secondly, on a matter of communication, under paragraph 21 of this resolution, I would like to draw the House's attention to the fact that we have on many occasions in these debates called for all Commission and Parliament offices in the Member States to work together within a European House framework by 1 January 2000. As we have now gone past that date and there are still one or two Member States, in particular my own, where Parliament and the Commission have different offices and where in terms of financing Parliament's office well over 70% of the expenditure goes on bricks and salaries, it does not leave much for communications. The sooner we can make sure that the image of the European Union is reflected by one European House, the better it will be.
The last point refers to the question of the implications for enlargement. I would like to support what our rapporteur has said that we cannot suddenly leap into beginning to authorise posts for preparing enlargement if a political decision has not yet been taken; all the more so, because in Parliament's estimates, as I have understood them, we have in front of us an assumption that we are going to have more languages as a result of enlargement. Yet we have had no debate in this House to know how we are going to handle not a limited enlargement but an extensive enlargement following the Helsinki Summit late last year, with potentially 12 or 13 new countries, that is 27 – 28 countries with over 20 different languages. How, Secretary-General, are we going to handle this if we do not have some thinking from the Administration as to where we are going to put them all? Are we going to have rooms which we are going to have to adjust for over 20 languages so that in every room where there is a discussion in this Parliament every person has the right to use their own language?
We are aware that in the last Parliament a lot of work was done on this by Vice-President Cot. His report was never released to Members. We never saw it as a report on suggesting how the hub and spoke system should work – the relay system for interpretation – nor, indeed, did we really have any thinking about the freelancing possibilities with modern communications where we can dispatch a large amount of our translation material to people who are in the Member States, rather than recruiting a whole range of people to come and work in Luxembourg as fixed and permanent employees of Parliament.
Therefore, I strongly support the compromise which has been put forward by our rapporteur asking, by first reading, for the Secretary-General to come up with a strategy of how to handle the whole question of languages in Parliament and enlargement. I suspect the Commission might wish to do that as well, because it is a problem which rightly, in this amendment, relates to interinstitutional matters. I very much hope that the Socialist Group will change their mind, get their heads out of the sand and realise that this is the problem which we have to tackle and that it is better to do it now rather than later."@en1
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