Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-12-12-Speech-2-293"
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"en.20001212.13.2-293"2
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".
Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, as you can tell from looking at it, Mrs Morgan, this report has taken a great deal of work and discussion within and outside Parliament, within and outside the Commission, and within and outside the Court of Auditors. But after all that shows just how politically significant it is. I want to congratulate you very warmly on this successful and balanced result.
After the events of the past year, your aim is to create a budgetary control and discharge procedure which is more transparent and above all more efficient and effective. I may assure you that the Commission is constantly seeking to improve its own procedures. It will therefore also take this report as food for further thought.
You took a very useful and I believe also a very self-assured step in involving the Commission as also the Court of Auditors in your deliberations before drafting the report. Those institutions made a targeted effort to find ways of improving the discharge procedure.
Regarding access to documents for the discharge report, which is indeed an important issue, let me point out that the Commission's point of departure in its activities is the Interinstitutional Agreement reached in July this year, especially Annex 3 on access to confidential information. I can assure you that the Commission will honour this agreement in full. Let me point out to Mrs Stauner who just raised certain questions that under this agreement the committee chairperson puts questions regarding confidential information to the Commission or forwards them to it. Let me tell you that the committee chairperson has put no questions on this to the Commission.
The report calls for detailed reviews of operational activities, thorough checks of budget headings and irregularities together with an assessment of the Commission's internal performance. We are convinced that with its administrative reform the Commission has made and is still making substantial progress here. And indeed Parliament also paid tribute to this reform programme.
Mrs Morgan's report devotes much space to the question of whether in future the Court of Auditors should appraise the activities of each directorate-general and each department individually. In this context let me remind you that Article 276 of the EC Treaty refers to the discharge of the budget in general and not to individual parts or areas of the budget. In the same context let me observe that of course the risk of errors in implementing the budget regardless of whether they are major or minor differs widely from one department to another because they have totally different operational budgets and face different risks. In the agricultural sector, for instance, Mr Fischler's total budget comes to approx. EUR 443 billion, while the budget of the Directorate-General for the budget is almost non-existent, so that, of course, there is hardly any risk at all there. During the general debate it will of course have to be decided whether there will be different levels of tolerance of errors, because naturally it is very much easier to implement the budget in, for example, the administrative sector, where salaries are paid. I would say the tolerance of errors should be more or less zero there, while in the area of external services, of foreign policy, quite different risks arise if, for instance, we provide humanitarian aid in a war zone. That too would have to be taken into account.
You can see from what I said that I think it would be useful to discuss these proposals further in order to find out how to assign responsibilities more clearly here. After all, that is also what you seek to do in relation to the Member States. Let me point out that I will take the opportunity to discuss these proposals at the next meeting with the Member States' representatives concerned with financial control. And I will happily report back on this discussion to the committee.
Once again, congratulations on your report."@en1
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