Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-07-01-Speech-2-328"
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"en.20030701.13.2-328"2
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".
Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, I am very pleased that we are holding so timely a debate on budget implementation so early in the year. Parliament receives the figures on budget implementation on a weekly basis. These are direct figures from the accounts. No Parliament of the Member States is kept informed like this. I stress this because the Commission’s accounting has been and is a subject of public debate and a lot of things are said that are not always entirely correct. I am glad that we can debate the matter properly here and I thank the rapporteur for his detailed report.
Apart from these weekly figures, you also receive a report three times a year commenting on the implementation of the budget and giving details in particular of so-called abnormal RALs, that is commitments the Commission entered into a very long time ago and commitments for which no payments have been made in the last three years. The level of commitments entered into and which will result in corresponding expenditure in the next few years amounts now – at the end of June – to a total of EUR 122 000 million. I agree with Mr Färm, the rapporteur, that this amount needs to be reduced quickly. But I also agree that we must be careful not to label the total amount of RALs as abnormal because this year that is not correct. The Commission has a budget for commitment appropriations showing their amount, something that is not the case in many Member States, for example.
I would like to comment on a few points or questions from your report, Mr Färm. First the question of the directorates general or policy areas to which the total 717 posts approved by the Budgetary Authority in 2001 and 2002 were allocated. You will be getting a detailed listing of these. In the last few years we have strengthened the foreign policy area, among others, and also such implementing areas as, for example, regional policy or the growing area of justice and internal affairs.
Another point: what is the staffing plan for the Enlargement DG in 2004, after the accession of the ten new Member States? The 2004 Budget assumes there will be an appreciable reduction in staffing, in the number of posts in this directorate general, a reduction of 105 posts in fact. You must bear in mind that the Enlargement Directorate-General’s activity next year will not be confined to the candidate countries Bulgaria, Romania and Turkey, but that it will continue to administer pre-accession aid; also, a specific programme was agreed for 2004 and subsequent years in the accession negotiations to continue to give administrative assistance for the development of a good administration. The further trend for the Enlargement DG will then be reviewed in the course of the 2005 budget procedure.
Regarding the state of budget execution this year, you also note that implementation is less than at the same time last year. This has in fact to do with the work involved in bringing in the new Financial Regulation. This new Financial Regulation brings far-reaching changes for financial management. It is a fundamental reform. The Directorate General for the Budget trained over 1 000 members of staff last year. But there is much that is new and requires familiarisation. Recipients of payments have to be asked for better security arrangements, for example. That also requires a degree of familiarisation on our side.
I would like to make a few special comments about budget implementation in the external fields. Generally speaking, the rate of utilisation in the first few months of this year does not necessarily set the trend for the rest of the year. So far, commitments totalling EUR 1 800 million have been made, which is not at all bad. With regard to pre-accession aid, I would also like to point out that in this case implementation continues to be unsatisfactory. If, however, you compare this year’s budget implementation figures with those from last year, you can see that there has been some acceleration.
We had a special situation with humanitarian aid. You mentioned it yourself. Here, funding was cut in the course of the 2003 budget procedure, even remembering that there is the emergency reserve. The Budgetary Authority has approved EUR 79 million for humanitarian work in Iraq. We have asked for a further EUR 25 million for southern Africa and tomorrow we will be talking about a further EUR 15 million for Ethiopia. I hope we will find agreement on that, too, because it is essential that aid be provided really quickly here. I think everyone involved agrees with that."@en1
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