Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-11-16-Speech-4-009"
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"en.20061116.2.4-009"2
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".
Mr President, Mr Diamandouros, Commissioner Wallström, ladies and gentlemen, I am glad that you have all managed to get up so early and be present here for the debate on the report on the 2005 report from the European Ombudsman.
It follows, then, that the powers and responsibilities of the institutions need to be demarcated even more clearly in order that the public may understand who, in the European Union, is responsible for dealing with what, and you can help to make the tangled undergrowth of institutions and their powers more transparent, something that is, of course, in the first instance a task for Parliament and for its Members in the electoral districts in the relevant regions, but you can play your part too.
We extend a very warm welcome to the European Network of Ombudsmen and similar bodies, which take quite different forms from one Member State to another, and we have, for that reason, particularly highlighted their public information events.
Turning to the substance of the various complaints, they focus primarily on a lack of transparency, and so, in that the report repeats the Ombudsman’s demands – made in his special report on the subject – for all meetings of the Council in its legislative capacity to be open to the public, you have served the cause of democracy and transparency in Europe well.
We also, though, need more transparency if the democratic functioning of the European Union is to be guaranteed, and hence, in our report – and in saying this, I am perhaps addressing you, Commissioner Wallström, more than anyone else – we call for the ‘europa.eu’ Internet portal to be redesigned as a means of access to all the institutions and for a clear guide to the various European institutions – rather than a catalogue of all the European Union’s activities – to be positioned on the homepage.
Finally, I should like to give voice to another thought, namely that it was in January that you presented your annual report for the past year, yet it is only now – in November of the following year – that we are debating it. We in the Committee on Petitions should endeavour to discuss these reports as soon as possible after they are published.
I would like to start by thanking you, Mr Diamandouros, most warmly for the constructive contribution you have made in the shape of your annual report, on which I have had the privilege of reporting to this House on behalf of the Committee on Petitions, and I would like, in so doing, also to thank all the Members of this House who, by their amendments and personal comments, have played a constructive part in the report’s gestation, especially our coordinator Mr Atkins and my predecessor from last year, Mr Mavrommatis.
I am glad that you started by highlighting the need for the Ombudsman’s status to be specified in rather clearer terms in view of the increasing workload with which the public present you, and I am most obliged to you for having actually done that again today. Since we should try to draw the demarcation lines between the functions of the different European institutions as sharply and distinctly as possible, the deliberations on your letter to our President, Mr Borrell, may well bring us to a satisfactory outcome.
The European Ombudsman is an important European institution, being particularly relevant to Europe’s development and with a special importance in the eyes of the European public. He exists to bring the European Union closer to its citizens and to make it transparent. It is to him that Europe’s citizens can turn in order to complain when the institutions do not do their jobs properly; that gives him a very personal relationship with Europe, one that cannot be the same everywhere, and that is what makes his position so special.
It is this idea – the idea that European policy should be shaped more by practical considerations and by reference to the interests of the public – that we should, in future, take more to heart. We must focus our policies more closely on the public and thereby show them that they and their concerns – be these major or minor, important or trivial – are taken seriously, and we will accomplish that firstly by making a better job of communicating what European policy is all about, and secondly, by way of greater transparency – two important points from among those I have made about your annual report.
The Committee on Petitions has received the European Ombudsman's annual report, which discusses his activities over the past year, and that leads me to thank you for doing a splendid job of work. You have been in office since 1 April 2003, and your labours are being crowned with success.
I believe that the report that this House has produced is a very balanced one; I have endeavoured to examine the Members’ amendments and, where I thought it possible, to incorporate them. I believe that the report is comprehensible to the public, and that is the most important thing, but, following the vote in committee, I assumed that not all the amendments could be re-submitted, and I will, for that reason, be recommending to my group that it should reject them. For that I ask your understanding. We have spent a long time trying to compromise on this point.
You have already set out the most important points from your report. The year 2005 saw a large number of complaints – the largest, indeed, ever made to the Ombudsman – and the first thing that indicates is that more and more people are taking an active interest in the EU and in the way it works.
What is shocking, though – and this is something to which you referred – is the continuing large number of complaints – amounting to some 70% of those made – that are not actually within your remit, very often because the people making them do not know with any certainty to whom they actually need to address themselves, and it is for that reason that I very much welcome your statement to the effect that you want an online form set up on your homepage as a guide to the right institution; that would certainly be useful to all those who want to contact you online."@en1
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