Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2004-10-26-Speech-2-145"
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"en.20041026.12.2-145"2
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"Mr President, Minister, Commissioner, I wish firstly to say thank you to Commissioner Schreyer, who is taking part in her last budget reading today, and, in common with Mr Garriga, I find that quite sad. I can remember, when you started a little over five years ago, how relations were between Parliament and the Commission in the area of the budget. There was almost a chill in the air on entering a committee room to talk about budgetary matters, because relations were not good after the fall of the Santer Commission. There was quite a lot of mistrust between the Commission and Parliament, and many hard words were spoken. I think that, through your way of working, Mrs Schreyer, and through the way in which you have tackled things, you have made a very large contribution to rebuilding trust between Parliament and the Commission. You deserve thanks for that. I really do think there have been fantastic successes throughout these five years.
An amount has also been appropriated from Parliament’s budget to a campaign concerning the new Constitutional Treaty. It is not a campaign in the sense that we have to go out and engage in propaganda, but Parliament’s leaders have felt that we in the European Parliament have a quite specific duty to ensure that the population of the EU is informed about what this Treaty really contains and is given a knowledge it can use as a basis for the votes that are to take place in the individual countries. It will be the national governments and national parties that do the information work with a view to the actual campaigns prior to the votes. It was felt that we have a special obligation, and that is something with which, in a way, I agree. We have a special obligation to provide information about what is contained in the new Constitutional Treaty, and that is what the amount appropriated from the budget is to be used for.
In its agreement, Parliament’s Committee on Budgets maintained the gentlemen’s agreement with the Council. We, for our part, do not interfere in the Council’s budget, and the Council does not, for its part, interfere in ours. In the course of our negotiations, amendments were, however, tabled that, in actual fact, cut into the Council’s budget for administration of the common foreign and security policy and, at the same time, cut into Parliament’s budget, namely that for the buildings reserve. The proposal was not accepted by the Committee on Budgets, but was retabled here in plenary. However much sympathy I may have for the intention behind the proposal, I did not, as rapporteur, recommend or support it. The intention behind this proposal is, of course, to press the Council to bring about greater transparency in the administration of the common foreign and security policy. It is, to a large extent, the growing expenditure in this field that has led to a rate of increase of almost 5% in the Council’s budget for 2005, while the budgets of the other institutions have increased by a little over 3%. I very much agree that we should ensure transparency and also ensure that no items are entered in this part of the Council’s budget that should properly be part of the action expenditure. I would therefore repeat my appeal to the Council to keep a tighter rein on the budget and to ensure greater transparency. I must emphasise that, from Parliament’s point of view, the expenditure on the common foreign and security policy does not form part of the gentlemen’s agreement. It is obviously an area that we shall discuss further over the next few years. In turn, we in Parliament shall, of course, also keep an eye on our administrative expenditure and continually look to see whether there is scope for savings and increases in efficiency. That is something I believe we owe our taxpayers.
I must say something about the budgets for the other institutions. We together decided, Mr Garriga and I, to follow a strategy in which we tried to find as many funds as possible under expenditure heading five so that we might return many of the savings agreed by the Council and so be able to meet the desire for staff increases as a result of enlargement, staffing reform and changes to financial management.
If we look at the budgets for the Court of Justice, the Court of Auditors, the European Economic and Social Committee, the Committee of the Regions, the Ombudsman and the European Data Protection Supervisor, the budget that we are now presenting, and that was adopted in the Committee on Budgets, has increased by EUR 10 million in respect of the preliminary budget from the Council. We have, then, returned close on two thirds of the Council’s savings, and that in actual fact makes it possible for all the institutions to implement the desired staff appointments as a result of enlargement and staffing reform and the reform of financial management. I am pleased that, in dialogue with the institutions, a solution has successfully been found that can satisfy everybody, or at least I hope it can, and I would thank you for your constructive work in this process.
I think it was especially unfair that the Council’s savings hit the budgets for the Ombudsman and the Data Protection Supervisor. These are small new institutions which are in the process of development, and I feel that the solution we have found in the Committee on Budgets is a reasonable result for these two institutions.
On the other hand, we have only a very modest margin below the ceiling for the administrative expenditure. We have, in a way, almost used up the margin. I understand that new statistics from Eurostat show that wages will increase less than we had originally expected in 2005. When we reach the budget figures during second reading, the pressure on the administrative expenditure will therefore be less than we had at first believed, so we may perhaps, in spite of everything, find a margin.
We have also, in different institutions, investigated the possibility of whether, through accelerated payments this year, we might help create some leeway in the budget for next year. Last but not least, the institutions should of course continually ensure that administration takes place as efficiently and inexpensively as possible so that financial surpluses are prevented through cooperation between the institutions.
Where Parliament’s budget is concerned, we have kept this down to 20% of administrative expenditure, that is to say 20% of the money under expenditure heading five. That level seems quite reasonable in relation to needs. I nonetheless wish to emphasise that, in recent years, it has been possible, within our budget – that is to say, within the 20% – for Parliament to expend quite a significant amount on buildings, thereby saving ourselves rent in future years’ budgets. There is a clear desire in the Committee on Budgets for us, in connection with such investments, to obtain increased transparency in Parliament’s budget. We are in the process of having two new buildings constructed in connection with Parliament’s building in Brussels. These two new buildings will cost more than EUR 300 million, and it must be assumed that the contractual negotiations are now at last progressing quickly enough for it to be possible, both this year and in 2005, to pay off a portion of this sum.
There is still the hope that it will soon be possible for a statute of members, which will guarantee MEPs uniform financial conditions, to be adopted for Parliament. The fact remains, however, that, even if a statute of members is adopted very quickly, it will take some time getting the new system to operate in practice. It is uncertain to how many MEPs a statute of members will apply at first, for there will obviously be a number of transitional arrangements. We have therefore thought it most sensible not to state an actual amount for what the statute of members might cost in 2005. A figure with what is called a ‘p.m.’ (
) is quoted.
In the 2005 budget, EUR 17.5 million has, moreover, been appropriated to increasing the remuneration paid to MEPs’ secretariats. At the moment, some investigative committee work is under way in which we are looking at whether our rules can be written out in a clearer and more easily understandable way, and we in the Committee on Budgets have entered the amount for increasing the secretariats’ remuneration in the reserve while we await an actual decision from the Bureau."@en1
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"pour mémoire"1
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