Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-09-25-Speech-1-112"
| Predicate | Value (sorted: default) |
|---|---|
| rdf:type | |
| dcterms:Date | |
| dcterms:Is Part Of | |
| dcterms:Language | |
| lpv:document identification number |
"en.20060925.15.1-112"2
|
| lpv:hasSubsequent | |
| lpv:speaker | |
| lpv:spokenAs | |
| lpv:translated text |
".
Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, perhaps I might observe at the outset that it is stated in the report we are about to discuss, and on which we will be voting tomorrow, that we are giving discharge to the President of Parliament, and so I think it highly regrettable that the President of this House is not present for our deliberations today. I would like to point out that he is under a particular obligation to be present.
All these observations notwithstanding, and with suggestions for the future, we are giving discharge for 2004. We will, however, be discussing further developments in future reports as and when this proves necessary.
Although we had in fact completed the discharge procedure for this House’s 2004 budget back in April, careful reading of the local paper here in Strasbourg brought to light something that, in terms of its drama, certainly takes some beating.
I think it unacceptable that, even though the House authorities were informed by the city of Strasbourg as long ago as November 2005 that the latter still had to conduct negotiations in respect of the two buildings – known as IPE 1 and IPE 2 – with a Dutch pension fund, both the House authorities and the Bureau pressed on with the purchase negotiations and it was only our own initiative that prevented the deal going through. Moreover, what we have managed to find out from investigating this – and it is on this that I would like to concentrate in the little time remaining to me – makes for a pretty interesting tale.
Back in 1979, when direct elections were introduced, the European Parliament decided that it needed office space. There can be no objection to that. It asked the city of Strasbourg to make such space available – and there is nothing objectionable about that either. The city of Strasbourg decided that it could not afford to do that itself, so it commissioned a third party – the Dutch pension fund to which I have referred – to build an office block. What resulted from this was a sub-letting arrangement, with us ending up paying the city of Strasbourg between EUR 30 and EUR 60 million – depending on which study one consults – more in rent than it, in turn, was paying to the pension fund, even though this House’s Committee on Budgets and the Quaestors had, in 1980, insisted that no more be paid from then on to the city of Strasbourg that it itself was paying to the pension fund.
It was this House’s Bureau that, in 1983, reviewed the acceptability of the rent charged and devised a new system of calculation based on comparability, on which basis the rent was calculated anew, and, since it was during the 1980s that inflation in France was at its height, the city of Strasbourg wanted the lease index-linked, albeit without any limit of time.
This has led us, in the report which I have the honour of presenting today, to two basic conclusions. The first is that, with effect from 1983 at the latest, the authorities charged with the management of this wonderful building, the European Parliament, stopped doing anything about the leases that they had concluded with the city of Strasbourg. That is unacceptable, for, to give a quite specific example, one consequence of the introduction of the euro is that index-linking has become meaningless. The second conclusion – and this is something I want to spell out plainly – is that the city of Strasbourg, which provides the European Parliament with a home, has given no kind of example of good and trusting cooperation between the institution and the city.
All our audits have established that there has been no corruption, no fraud, no mismanagement, no misappropriation of funds. I very much regret the absence of the honourable Member who has been known to sit here wearing a gas mask and claiming that the place stank of corruption.
It was not for us to judge whether or not it was wise that the European treaties should lay down where the seat of Parliament was to be. There is a lady Member who lives in Brussels and no doubt has a miserable time of it in the youth hostel when she comes to Strasbourg; I also very much regret her absence, not to mention the fact that she has contributed nothing by way of input to this report. What we were required to do was to go through what had happened in the past, and that is what we have done. My warm thanks go to all the Members who have played their part in this. We were not, however, called upon to decide where the European Parliament’s seat should be, which is a matter for the infinite wisdom of the Heads of State or Government, and I am sure we all know that the issue is safe in their hands.
So, then, many thanks from me to all who have had a hand in this, combined with sadness that there were so many who sought to turn this into a media campaign without, however, taking any part in the real work that was done by the working party and in the Committee on Budgetary Control."@en1
|
Named graphs describing this resource:
The resource appears as object in 2 triples