Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-12-04-Speech-4-008"
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"en.20031204.1.4-008"2
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"Mr President, let me, on behalf of my group, thank the President of the Court of Auditors for his report, although what I have to say I will address to the Commission. After nine years as an MEP – four and a half of them on the Committee on Budgetary Control – one imagines that there are no more particularly enlightening experiences in store. My belief that this is the case was disproved this week; I had a moment of clarity exactly two days ago when, in the Committee on Budgetary Control, a Commissioner who was already under pressure was faced with a situation in which the Commission apparatus had not yet supplied answers to four questions by a fellow-Member relating to the Eurostat case, even though those answers had been due since mid-October. What I found illuminating about this was that, for the first time and for just five minutes, I found myself obliged to appreciate what an enormous achievement this was on the part of the Commission’s apparatus and what this says about the depth of its loyalty to a Commissioner. I am bringing my political problem not to you personally, Commissioner, but, so to speak, to the Commission as a college of Commissioners. I have started to feel tempted to stop directing political criticism at the Commissioners and to start feeling nothing but pity for them. If, in the months in office remaining to them, they cannot manage to give their apparatus some sort of structure, so that their officials go in fear of their masters and acquire a minimal amount of loyalty to their political leaders, then we are in for lot of fun and games in the coming months. If the present Commission does not at last get that message, then heaven help their successors in the next one. If there is no change in this state of affairs, then nor will there be even the slightest change in the public’s perception of the Commission; it will, if anything get even worse. The time has come for this to be said out loud, and I believe it is necessary that it should be."@en1
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