Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2004-10-26-Speech-2-190"
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"en.20041026.12.2-190"2
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"Mr President, like other speakers in this debate, I should like to congratulate both rapporteurs. It is never an easy matter to represent this House on budgetary matters, whether in relation to the Commission's or Parliament's budget. My congratulations go out to them. Of course, we are not at the end of the budget procedure but already in this big, first public debate we have come a considerable way.
I should like quickly to cover a matter that we hold dear in my political group – the question of value for money. I should like to underline what Commission Schreyer referred to this afternoon, which is not often mentioned: we have a budget, a very strictly managed budget. In 1992, if I remember correctly, it covered 1.1% GDP and is now under 1% GDP, with savings in the running of the agriculture budget, for example.
However, we have to keep particular lines in focus. Mr Titford mentioned the question of funding cultural organisations. We have asked for one of those lines to be in reserve precisely so that we can make sure that the funding goes to organisations that actually exist. But I would remind Mr Titford that even taking the amount of money that he referred to, it is less than 0.01% of the overall budget. Therefore, to refuse to accept the budget on that basis is not really valid. I would have been more convinced if he had taken up the issue of funding for Iraq where, as a political group last year, we asked for EUR 500m to be put in, but everyone threw up their arms and said that we would not be able to find that sum of money. But we have found it because other lines have been able to be pilfered for it.
It is always nice to be right in retrospect, but I would agree with Mrs Dührkop that when funding a budget, we should clearly set the priorities that we wish to set as between the Commission, the Council and the European Parliament, so that we do not find other objectives submerged within a broader political will. This will be highly necessary when we come to set the next financial perspective: we must not be found wanting in this particular area of external policy.
Secondly, linked to the matter of the financial perspective is one of the questions that we put down on the approval of posts. We would like to see whether there are going to be amendments available for the financial regulation to enable us to make sure that monies allocated are properly spent. Therefore, we would like those amendments available to us before we come to final decisions on the financial perspective next year.
Lastly, we have often pioneered the idea of interinstitutional cooperation. I know that you have done your best, Commissioner, while in office. But I believe that those of us in this House should remember that when we ask the Commission to apply codes of conduct to high-level officials, to the way in which Commissioners run their offices and so on, we should not ask the Commission to apply standards that we ourselves refuse to apply. Therefore, if we ask for a code of conduct we will have to apply it ourselves in the future to retain credibility."@en1
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