Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-11-05-Speech-3-180"

PredicateValue (sorted: default)
rdf:type
dcterms:Date
dcterms:Is Part Of
dcterms:Language
lpv:document identification number
"en.20031105.14.3-180"2
lpv:hasSubsequent
lpv:speaker
lpv:spokenAs
lpv:translated text
"Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, on behalf of my group I would like to begin by congratulating Mr Blak on his report. I agree with the essence of what Mr Heaton-Harris has said. The new Financial Regulation makes it possible to include the Agency for Safety and Health at Work, the Environment Agency, the Translation Centre, the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction and the European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia in the European Parliament’s discharge procedure for the first time. I expressly welcome the fact that all the agencies are now discharged by Parliament, as the most recent cases of internal irregularities in the Commission clearly show how important it is to have ongoing checks of the institutions. This innovation is doubtless important, but can be only the first step. A second innovation, an equally essential requirement, is that Parliament must be given a power of codecision in the appointment of directors. It is a contradiction for Parliament to have a say in appointing the ombudsman and the Commission President, while having no such right in respect of the agencies. We know there is a tendency for agencies to proliferate. There are more and more of them. These agencies are evidently to be given their own legal personality. As a Parliament, therefore, as taxpayers’ representatives, we must insist on having a power of codecision in them, in the way they are appointed. I have had a printout made of the various agencies we have at the moment. There is a first generation, to which Thessaloniki and Dublin belong, then a second generation with Copenhagen, Turin and I do not know who else, agencies not receiving a subsidy from the new budget, which you have already mentioned, Alicante and Angers, Codecision EP and Council, Brussels, Brussels temporarily. That is all those agencies like the European Food Safety Authority or the European Maritime Safety Agency, where they have said they will do something but they do not yet know where or when or how. That is an offence against Europe’s taxpayers. That is not addressed to you, but we do of course know that these agencies will have to start work somewhere sometime, and the Member States have proclaimed at the tops of their voices that they will, but they do not know when, they do not know where and they do not know how much it will cost. We have to be concerned about that, and the Social Democrats in this House, like the Christian Democrats, as Mr Heaton-Harris has said, will be insisting that we have a power of codecision here and we shall be pressing very hard for it. Reiterated congratulations, by the way, to Mr Blak on his report."@en1

Named graphs describing this resource:

1http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/rdf/English.ttl.gz
2http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/rdf/Events_and_structure.ttl.gz
3http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/rdf/spokenAs.ttl.gz

The resource appears as object in 2 triples

Context graph