Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2002-05-14-Speech-2-054"
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"en.20020514.6.2-054"2
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"Mr President, I too would like to thank Mr Stenmarck for his report. I agree with him that the estimates in front of us are critical in that they deal with Parliament's preparations for enlargement. We all know that this is the greatest enlargement the EU has faced, so it is critical that we get the preparations right in time for 2004. This is especially so in the current climate in which the EU seems to be needlessly coming under attack from all sides. Our credibility more than ever depends on getting this right. In this context the need for improved provision for information is imperative and I therefore support the 15% increase outlined in this report for this area. Bringing the work of the European Parliament closer to the people must be one of our top priorities.
It is increasingly evident that all the work we have been doing on information provision has not quite caught the imagination of the European public. I heard recently some evidence from the Irish referendum on the Nice Treaty which shows that citizens who went to Parliament or Commission information offices for literature were not sufficiently convinced or motivated to go out and vote. If this is indeed the case, we need a fundamental review of what we are publishing and how we are communicating with the people.
So what did encourage people to go out and vote? The source of information that encouraged people to go out and vote "yes" most effectively was conversations with friends and family. The clear message for us is that producing mountains of glossy brochures is not getting the message across. I, for one, am continually meeting people who are completely confused about the roles of the different institutions. We need, therefore, to recognise that we must have interinstitutional cooperation on information policy, and such cooperation has been quite slow to develop.
I know that some of these issues may be dealt with by the convention and I know the Council is talking about opening up its decision-making process to permit greater transparency. However, we need to be more focused and targeted in our approach and I am not entirely convinced that the proposal in this report to broadcast Parliament's plenary part-sessions on the Internet, will really solve the problem. How many people will be inclined to sit at their computer and watch such broadcasts? Before we go down this particular road we should undertake a pilot study and look at the cost-value ratio of this measure.
I am also extremely concerned about how the institutions are going to deal with proposals for funding the administrative costs. Commissioner Schreyer has informed us today that in the proposed PDB for 2003 on administrative expenditure there will be a negative margin of EUR 66 million. It is proposed to finalise this through the flexibility instrument.
I have enormous reservations about this, because my understanding of the flexibility instrument is that it is meant to be there for unforeseen events. How can we justify using this to the taxpayer for the administrative purposes which are known and have been foreseen for quite a long time? What happens if there is another crisis in the coming year? How will we fund measures to tackle it?
Commissioner Schreyer also made a reference to pensions. I recognise that this is an area in which there has been a dramatic increase in terms of the provisions we need, given the demographic profile of staff in the institutions. Surely we need proposals for the long term which look at how we can provide for the pensions by setting up a fund or alternative means,.
The issue of budgetary rigour is referred to time and time again. We want greater budgetary rigour, but there are two major issues that the Council needs to address if we are to achieve this, and it is a pity it is not here to listen to this: the first one is the issue of the language regime. The area most affected by enlargement within the institution will be staff and the building costs related to languages. Whilst I support the right of all MEPs to speak their own language, we must recognise that we need to rationalise this and we need to recognise the danger of a loss of dynamism in our meetings. The Council therefore needs to look at the Treaty provisions to see how we can rationalise this area.
Secondly, the issue of the seat of the European Parliament requires urgent attention. This fact alone has a major impact on costs. Surely it is time that Parliament has one seat."@en1
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