Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-10-24-Speech-2-255"
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"en.20001024.7.2-255"2
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"Mr President, one of the great privileges of parliamentarians is to talk about the budget. As an old House of Commons man I am delighted that we have this opportunity here today. There is an old saying: “No taxation without representation”. However, when we look at the development budget there are all sorts of peculiarities which we should concentrate on.
We accept that there is waste and inefficiency in the development budget. I know that the Committee on Development and Cooperation is looking very hard at it. So is the Committee on Budgets. There was a reference earlier to Hurricane Mitch and money going to the people in those little islands. In fact no money has gone to the people in the little islands because we could not get our act together and help the people who needed the money.
But my main point is about the ACP. Two weeks ago we had the ACP Joint Parliamentary Assembly. It is no longer a joint assembly. It is now a Joint Parliamentary Assembly. And that brings me back to my original point about representation and taxation. Now 35 Members of Parliament from 35 different countries come together twice a year as Members of Parliament to discuss development and mutual cooperation. Yet when you look at this joint assembly, it does not actually control a budget. Yes, it is a parliamentary assembly but it has no budget to control, because the EDF budget which we use for the ACP is apparently controlled by the Member States. During my time in the House of Commons not once do I recall any debate about the EDF budget and I doubt whether there is any debate in the Member States about the EDF budget. So who does debate, as elected representatives, the EDF budget? I suspect no-one. The Commission proposes and disposes. We have a parliamentary assembly which does not have a budget. We should look at this again."@en1
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