Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2002-02-05-Speech-2-009"
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"Mr President, first of all, I should like to extend a warm welcome to the President of the European Investment Bank, Mr Maystadt. In February last year, I expressed the hope of turning the discussion of the annual report in this Parliament into an annual tradition, and this is what we are honouring now. It has taken a while before the report could be included on the agenda – indeed, it was already completed in November – but it is good to uphold this tradition.
Moreover, I understand that, this coming Thursday, you also intend to present the plans for the future and the 2001 annual report to the press and the Council. Last year, we met immediately after this presentation, whereas this year, our meeting immediately precedes it, and I hope that you will be able to lift the veil and give us some information about these plans for the future.
Before I deal with the content, I should also like to thank Mr Schmidt for his report and for the sound cooperation during the handling of the amendments tabled by us and other groups. In my opinion, it has been a productive group effort.
I should now like to turn to a number of points which were also raised in our annual report last year, and note with satisfaction that you have indeed devoted attention to these in your further plans, and that Parliament’s areas of concern indeed recur in the Corporate Operational Plan which you presented this year. I should like to comment on a few of these areas of concern. I will skim over other points, because these have already been dealt with by others. I trust that the environment will be dealt with adequately by the Greens and others. Needless to say, we support this, as well as the tabled amendments, although, like Mr Schmidt, we are loathe to replace Paragraph 30 which concerns the balance between the environment and other objectives. In other words, we do want to maintain this balance and only accept the amendment in question as a supplement. Transparency and evaluations have also already been commented on, and the subject of SMEs has already been raised by Mrs Grönfeldt.
I should, however, like to touch upon the matter of supervision. Last year, this was the subject of an extensive debate here, and you noticed that we made it very clear this year in the report that it is desirable for the European Central Bank to play a role in this supervision. You have probably seen the Financial Times of 29 January and ascertained that this is now also very much being considered in ECB circles. This was evidently raised during a lunch meeting with the Chairman of the FSA, the British financial authority, and I remember that we, too, raised the point during a lunchtime meeting with Mr Duisenberg and his colleagues in the past. It is my impression that, although the Bank is amenable to the idea, it is quite reticent because it is not equipped for this at the moment. I would call for a somewhat broader discussion to be held about this financial supervision in this Parliament, but also in the Council and in the Commission, for I have the impression that this topic is being dealt with in different reports in a very fragmented manner. It is important to sketch the broad outlines in this matter too. Perhaps we could do this in a more coherent discussion some time in the future.
As far as the EIB is concerned, it is not so much about supervision of the latter’s conduct. A number of arrangements have been made on this score and this supervision is also being exercised in a number of areas. It is mainly about the economic supervision of companies. The advantage of that could be that, by means of the financial resources available within the Bank, and also with the available reserves, more could be done and more risk-bearing action could be taken than is currently the case, provided that sound supervision is in place.
I would now like to turn to another topic which, with a view to the future, will become an important point of discussion, namely that of increasing the Bank’s capital. I assume that the supervisors, the Ministers for Economic and Financial Affairs, will be talking about this during the forthcoming meeting in June. You have seen that, in Paragraph 33, we declare our support for such a capital increase. This matter should be brought to a conclusion from 2003, and should particularly play a role in enlargement. The point of departure in this is – this is actually a comment I should like to make – that it should add value to EIB loans. The EIB should not do what is also possible within the market, and I believe that it is important that it act in a transparent manner. Unfortunately, I am unable to make any of my other comments, but I shall do so in due course."@en1
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