Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-03-26-Speech-3-120"
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"en.20030326.7.3-120"2
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".
Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, like previous speakers, I should like to thank all those who have spoken on this subject, a subject we have debated on many occasions. I also share Commissioner Kinnock’s opinion that we have become used to working together and that very special links have been created.
I am speaking now, however, as the spokesperson for the opinion of the Committee on Budgets and, as such, I welcome the Commission’s assurances regarding the cost of reforming the staff regulations of the European Civil Service. If the working hypotheses are confirmed, the reform as a whole will be of limited cost to the Union’s budget and it ought, in any case, to be possible to finance it in the context of the current financial perspective. This is absolutely essential and I should therefore like to give Commissioner Kinnock full marks on this point.
This initial finding leads me to make a few additional comments, however. First of all, insofar as the reform package negotiated with the unions observes the principle of rigour, it seems to me that there is no need for the Council to demand that rights acquired by civil servants in relation to pensions should suddenly be called into question. The need to make savings on pensions is not urgent, and if the Council really wants to find ways of making savings, it should quite simply and quickly approve our proposals regarding the staff regulations of our parliamentary assistants.
Secondly, we think that pensions should not be a taboo subject. Improvements are possible and it seems to me, for example, that there is no longer any case for continuing to use the correction coefficients. I would also have liked to see mechanisms put in place to ensure the long-term viability of the current pensions system, precisely because we must protect civil servants’ interests. This cannot be done, however, without acting gradually, over a period of time, and above all in a spirit of consultation and dialogue.
Thirdly, and finally, on a broader level we must not lose sight of the objectives of this reform, which led us to encourage reform in general and the reform of the staff regulations in particular. It is – and always should be – a question of improving the efficaciency and the performance of the European institutions in the service of the Union. It is in the light of those objectives that we shall evaluate the appropriateness of each measure and judge the success of the reform."@en1
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