Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-11-16-Speech-4-220"
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"en.20001116.13.4-220"2
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".
Mr President, we are here today to debate the first of two reports on modifying the statute and general conditions governing the performance of the Ombudsman’s duties. I apologise to the House for being tempted at the end of the afternoon at the end of this part-session to take some of my longings for home as my inspiration for the debate on this report. If we think about it, as in relations with children, there comes a point in the process of the birth and growth of institutions that develop within others when we have to show, through our actions, that we acknowledge their independence. The time has now come to acknowledge that the institution of the ‘European Ombudsman’ is sufficiently grown up and has shown sufficient signs of maturity to have its own budget. Although, in the early stages, it seemed right and proper to have the independence of the Ombudsman’s mandate and actions coexist with a dependency on the financial resources of the European Parliament budget, today this no longer makes sense.
What we are now proposing is precisely that this separation should be acknowledged, as in the Council regulation of December 1999, approving the creation of a specific section for the Ombudsman in the general budget of the European Communities. This was a fundamental step forwards, as the Ombudsman was considered to be an independent institution in terms of the application of the Financial Regulation. This step was nothing more than the acknowledgement that the growing visibility of an institution which was born and which grew out of the need to bring European citizens closer to the life of the Community institutions also needs financial independence in order to take full responsibility for the budgetary provisions it makes and considers appropriate for the material and human resources necessary to ensure the proper discharge of its worthy duties.
We therefore now need to adapt its statute to the Financial Regulation and propose that two articles be deleted – Article 12 and Article 16 of Parliament’s 1994 decision – which, as we all know, approved the general conditions of the performance of the European Ombudsman’s duties. These rules stopped reflecting the budgetary situation after the last amendment to the Community Financial Regulation. We therefore need to recognise that this does not correspond to the real situation and approve its deletion. Given that we will soon have to apply ourselves in this Parliament to fundamental changes to the statute of the European Ombudsman, which are still being discussed in the Committee on Constitutional Affairs, to whose report I have been given access and which addresses the issue of extending the Ombudsman’s powers of investigation, we will wait until then for a complete, qualitative revision of the text of that statute.
Before I finish, Mr President, I wish to take this opportunity to welcome the rapporteur, Mr Söderman, and congratulate him on his work on fighting maladministration and thereby also bringing European citizens closer to the life of the Community institutions."@en1
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