Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-05-13-Speech-2-151"
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"en.20030513.7.2-151"2
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"Mr President, we can broadly support Mrs Gill’s thorough report. We warmly endorse the plea for strict budgetary discipline by the European Parliament.
In view of the forthcoming enlargement, Parliament will have to apply itself to its core activities more than ever. The primary task of this House, the supervision of the European Commission, must have priority, in addition to the responsibility for legislation in which the Parliament has the power of codecision. Reports and resolutions falling outside this scope should take up less agenda time and staff effort.
An important theme in this report is Parliament’s multilingualism. Diversity as an essential characteristic of European cultures finds expression in the existence of many languages. The accessibility and comprehensibility of European political debate for citizens from all the Member States is crucial for the quality of the democracy. Of course this does not affect the fact that we look critically at the expenditure for multilingualism. The Bureau of this Parliament should verify whether the scale of the translation and interpreting service for each language is indeed tailored to actual need. The workload for each language must be divided proportionally. I have the impression that it varies somewhat from one language to another and is certainly not proportional to the number of Members who speak a language. I understand for example that the degree of use of Dutch and Italian in this House is of the same order of magnitude. Any overcapacity must be scrapped or redistributed.
Another point, Mr President, is the very high average salary level of officials working for Parliament. The payment system conceals elements that for the most part stem from the early days and that are now no longer valid. The salaries of official staff should bear a reasonable relationship to the payments that the Members of Parliament receive, on which point I have to note that there is still no sign of the Statute for Members – a disgrace, for both the Council and the Parliament.
Closely tied up with this are travelling expenses, a topic in which voters have considerable interest. The importance of tighter criteria that are as objective as possible for allowances is evident. In view of the experiences in the current session, this House must make a critical review of the weeks in Strasbourg, which must, among other things, consider the additional costs involved with no additional results in return."@en1
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