Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-09-25-Speech-1-127"
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"en.20060925.15.1-127"2
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"Mr President, I, too, would like to have an extra 25% speaking time.
The rehashing of this business with the lease of the Strasbourg building – which has been going on for 28 years – puts me in a very reflective frame of mind.
It leaves me with doubts – doubts that will not go away – about the professionalism of the people who manage this House’s buildings and about how important value for money is to those who manage its finances. For 28 years, the House authorities did not check to see whether the leases were still good value – not even when the capital costs originally included had been written off, nor even when, in 1997, the Treaty of Amsterdam laid down that Strasbourg would be our seat, for it was at this point, at the latest, that it became necessary to assess the risk involved.
For years on end, the rent paid was excessive, to the considerable detriment of this House and of the European taxpayer, amounting – as even the assessor appointed to act on behalf of the French Republic admitted – to something between EUR 28 and EUR 32 million at the least. Who is actually responsible for this? Why have this House’s internal auditors failed to do their job? Nobody is answering these questions, and I am mad as hell about it. I, like every other Member of this House, will make sure that these issues, far from disappearing into oblivion, are, as they must be, followed up.
Tomorrow, we are to release EUR 80 million to buy these buildings, which we actually paid for years ago. We are even getting one of them thrown in for free, without knowing what long-standing liabilities it conceals. A contract has been cobbled together under considerable pressure of time, without the purchase price being renegotiated in view of what has transpired in the past. If this contract is no better or no worse than its predecessors, it will, within the foreseeable future, be the subject of another debate in this House."@en1
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"(The President interrupted the speaker.)"1
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