Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-07-04-Speech-3-340"
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"en.20010704.9.3-340"2
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I really do not know whom I should now be personally congratulating for winning at football! Mr President, rapporteurs, honourable Members, there is always a lot to do, discuss and decide where budgets are concerned, and today we have just had four important points: the two supplementary budgets for the current financial year, the resolution on financing the budget and the preparations for the first reading of the 2002 budget in the Council.
Now to the present motion for a resolution on own resources. The subject is becoming increasingly topical because of the question of what is the best way to finance the European budget. On the one hand, of course, we have the following situation: a new decision has been taken on own resources with a new structure, and this own resources decision naturally applies until something else is decided, with everything that goes with it, including the British rebate. That is the law as it stands.
So far as the structure of financing is concerned, the Treaty states that the public budget is financed out of own resources. That is what it says in the Treaty. The agreement with Parliament in 1975, for example, also stressed again that they should be genuine own resources. But instead, the
trend has been in quite a different direction, and you showed in detail in your report, Mrs Haug, that it has taken a different direction.
Regarding the financing that we currently have, I simply have to say that it is not transparent for the citizen. It is one of the most serious points, that hardly any citizen knows how the EU is financed, and what they do not know is all the more unfathomable and leaves room for every kind of speculation. For my own part, I can only say once more that I very much welcome the fact that the Belgian presidency intends taking up this matter of how the EU budget is financed and, Mr Ferber, I consider it to be a subject forming part of the whole issue of the delimitation of competences between the Member States and the European level. That is where it really belongs.
I think it is of course also quite important that all who welcome a restructuring on the revenue side should now also find a common vocabulary as soon as possible. If we talk about introducing an EU tax, that sounds like inventing some new kind of tax that the European Union will be entitled to levy. That is not what it is about at all. It is about specifying a tax, some or all of which will flow into the European budget, where responsibility for the amount raised will lie at European level, and it naturally also involves the problems of the European Parliament’s budgetary powers. From my own point of view, I can only stress what Mrs Haug said, that the real issue is: will the European Parliament continue to have these reduced budgetary powers on the revenue side as it does on the expenditure side?
I believe an opportunity has presented itself, and we should in my opinion go with the momentum when the Council presidency raises the issue on its own initiative, because if it is not adopted as a topic for Laeken at this point in time, I fear the matter will be buried again and we shall not be able to debate it for a long time.
Now to Mr Costa Neves’s report. This concerns the conciliation procedure before the Council’s first reading on 20 July, preparations for which take place in the trialogue on 9 July. I should again like to stress that the 9 July trialogue is of course also an important date, an important point in the whole budgetary procedure. Since Mrs Theato is here, I should like to make a brief comment. Mrs Theato, you sent me a rather strongly worded letter asking me kindly to come to the Committee on Budgetary Control to debate a periodic report on 9 July instead of going to the trialogue. I must again point out that I cannot of course be in two places at once and it goes without saying that it is part of the budget Commissioner’s duties to take part in the trialogue in preparation for the conciliation procedure for the 2002 budget.
But now to the points that will be at the centre of the conciliation. Mr Costa Neves has described these in detail. I should like to say the following. Firstly, I consider the Commission’s proposal to provide a EUR 1 bn reserve in the agriculture budget to be highly appropriate given the uncertainty surrounding the direction agricultural expenditure will take in the forthcoming year. We now have the first bills for foot and mouth disease on the table and more will come in, and they confirm that a large reserve is really necessary. We ought to play safe, and we will of course be able to be more precise in the Letter of Amendment in the autumn, including on the question of how much we shall have to pay from the budget for foot and mouth disease. But for the present I believe the level of reserve proposed is the best way forward and I very much hope that the European Parliament will support this in the conciliation procedure with the Council.
The second point concerns the abortive fisheries agreement with Morocco, which has been mentioned by several speakers here. It is an important point; I therefore want to speak about it briefly. The Commission plans to propose a cofinancing programme to assist with the restructuring of the Spanish and Portuguese fleets concerned by the end of July. It will be a programme financed in the category of the structural funds. But now you will say the structural funds category is empty or fully committed. The Commission will for this reason be making a proposal that the flexibility reserve, or part of it, be used to finance this restructuring programme. It would then be a one-year programme, implementation of which may extend over several years.
How the resources released in category IV by the abortive fisheries agreement should be used will have to be considered weighing up every aspect, including, and I say this expressly, the aspect of budgetary discipline.
In the matter of common foreign and security policy, Parliament takes the view that resources could be cut this year, too. In fact, the preliminary draft budget is the same as the 2001 budget, and the Commission sees no need for further cuts here, but the Commission will, of course, assist the rapporteur as requested in order to improve the budget commentaries.
Amending Budget No 3/2001 is concerned solely with personnel matters, in the field of research and in OLAF. Amending Budget No 4/2001 is concerned with the use of the budget surplus from last year. Both budgets are discussed in the report by Mrs Haug and Mr Ferber. In the matter of the Commission’s research personnel, they suggest a different establishment plan. This is acceptable to the Commission. So far as the change to the OLAF establishment plan is concerned, this is now based on a compromise arrived at in lengthy negotiations and I should like at this point to make a few observations about it. Firstly, a comment on the fact that the opinion of the Committee on Budgetary Control which is before us today still speaks of serious irregularities in OLAF, specifically that there are more A grade officials than posts.
Now a word on administrative expenditure. I share the European Parliament’s concern about the future trend of Category V and I therefore fully support the efforts for greater transparency and ease of planning for any new areas of activity, such as justice and home affairs. But I also want to make clear that it is not the expenditure on Commission reform that is putting a strain on the financial framework here. We all have to consider necessary reforms, and I believe it is essential that all institutions try to put forward a medium-term plan so that we can see where changes are necessary in order to get to grips with Category V. We really need to give thought to whether a high level group or similar should be deployed to deal with these issues.
You have drawn attention, Mr Costa Neves, to the report that the European Parliament had called for and which deals, among other things, with matters of budget implementation. I should like to thank you for the positive comment that it was completed on time and that it is a useful tool for discussing the questions raised in Parliament’s declaration.
There will also be close cooperation in the field of any actions included in the budget by the European Parliament. As also agreed, the Commission will be involved in the discussion by the various committees at an early stage in order to ensure that actions and pilot schemes can be implemented. That, too, is important for us and I should like to highlight in particular the areas of asylum and immigration policy.
A brief word on priorities in
and employment policy as they affect small and medium-sized enterprises. These are areas where large sums of money are available not only in the budget lines of Heading 3 but also in the structural funds, and the Commission believes that the new instruments introduced in the last budget must first prove their worth before they are substantially increased or expanded.
To conclude, all this shows how much we still have to discuss. Over the coming months we must work out the year 2000 budget together, and I hope that we shall be able to make good use of the next few weeks and the forthcoming meetings to arrive at common positions so that we shall have a good start to the budget negotiations.
In connection with this word “irregularities” I should simply like to point out once again that the budgetary authority authorised a certain number of grade A posts for the year 2000 establishment plan. Not all of them were actually filled by the Commission or OLAF, but when it came to the 2001 budget the budgetary authority then decided to cut the number of grade A posts to fewer than there were officials in place. Nothing like that has ever happened before and of course it creates difficulties, but to call it an irregularity and to create the impression that the Commission has filled posts it was not authorised to is simply not correct and I must reject the term irregularities in this connection.
I should also like to point out that the Commission passed the OLAF Director’s establishment plan proposals on to the budgetary authority unchanged precisely in order to underline OLAF’s independence. On the other hand, some of the European Parliament’s resolutions amount to very detailed micromanagement, which naturally at least raises a few questions as regards independence.
Overall, the fact that posts are being blocked and also that unfortunately not all posts have yet been approved is not exactly making it easy for OLAF to operate, and the authority does now have some really big tasks, and above all a wide range of different tasks, to cope with. I can at this point only assure you once again that the Commission is doing all it can to create good working conditions for OLAF.
Regarding the second Supplementary and Amending Budget. The year 2000 budget ended with a surplus of EUR 11.6 billion, as has been mentioned here several times. This is in part the result of increased revenue, the fruit, for example, of a more favourable trend in gross national product than was initially assumed, but for the greater part it is the result of resources not being implemented on the expenditure side. I must now say something about structural policy – it is after all the largest chunk, accounting for 6 of these 11 billion – namely that account was already taken of the fact that it would probably be difficult to implement all resources in the first year when the Interinstitutional Agreement was drawn up and signed. That was more or less taken for granted and it was therefore decided that commitments could be redeployed for subsequent years, and that is what has been done, which ensures that no resources are lost to the Structural Funds because of implementation difficulties in the first year.
The conclusion to be drawn from this is in my opinion that we must start much earlier with preparations and decision making for a future support period. I should like to point out, for example, that Parliament’s position on the Community initiatives was adopted in April 2000. We can see here that the whole process began too late. In other words, we must simply set an earlier timetable for the next support period. That applies to everyone, it applies to the Commission, it applies to Parliament and it also applies, of course, to the Council.
Incidentally, the entire resources of EUR 11.6 bn are not being returned. EUR 1.6 bn were already deployed in the 2001 budget, among other things to finance the BSE measures decided in Supplementary Budget No 1. EUR 2 075 bn are used to finance the budget correction for the United Kingdom, and unlike the previous speakers I am not looking at Mr Wynn here.
We have also proposed using EUR 350 million to top up the resources for reconstruction in the Balkans and to return the other part, namely EUR 7.5 bn, to the Member States by reducing their contributions to the 2001 budget accordingly. The rapporteurs are now proposing that not just EUR 350 million but 450 million be used to top up the resources for the Balkans. The Commission actually wanted to fund the difference by making further transfers from other areas, but we now agree to your proposal, especially in the light of the time factor, which is very important. We really do not want to run the risk of having to suspend payments for measures for Kosovo or Serbia. We all know how sensitive this area is and I very much hope that Parliament’s proposal in this connection will meet with the Council’s agreement so that the entire proposal can be adopted before the summer break."@en1
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