Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-12-12-Speech-2-248"
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"en.20061212.42.2-248"2
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"Mr President, I should like to draw the strands together as this will hopefully be our last debate on the 2007 budget. I should also like to welcome the Council and its representatives, who have been somewhat confused at some points in our procedure, which has led to misunderstandings that we hope will be clarified before we come to the final vote.
We are not going to escape from the speed of globalisation. That was the first point we made when we looked at the APS back in May. We are going to have to adjust the programmes for financing, looking forward to seeing where our money can be best spent.
I should like to thank the Commissioner very much for all the support she has given to most of Parliament’s ideas. Her support has been very helpful during this procedure. I thank my colleagues on the Committee on Budgets for their support and input into this procedure, but above all I should like to thank the Committee on Budgets staff who have enabled all of this to be put together. Without them I do not think we would be at this stage in the proceedings.
At this juncture I should like to raise a couple of points as general rapporteur. Not only have we been able to achieve – I believe it will be clarified that we have achieved this – the substantive negotiation on the Financial Regulation, which my colleague Mrs Gräßle will deal with in a moment or two, but we have been able to establish in our way of doing things for the 2007 budget a very prudent approach on payments below the 1%, largely because we are at the stage of having new programmes for the Financial Perspective. There are no particular requests or demands from the groups or committees. That is something we can no doubt expect in future years. So basically we re-establish the PDB, but with emphasis on our political priorities concerning research innovation where we have had additional appropriations.
Secondly, we have taken what I would call a sensible approach to the use of the reserve. Often in this House we have been able to put particular funds on reserve at first reading, but perhaps the conditions for release or the way in which this has been approached have not been sensible or coherent. Here there are three examples that I would like to mention where I believe the conditions for release and the policy for reserve use have actually been helpful in strengthening Parliament’s position in the budget process.
Firstly, I would cite the common foreign and security policy where we have a much clearer definition of what we gained in the interinstitutional agreement. We would very much hope now that the Council will hold to this, as we have had a very clear exchange of letters and we should not then have the same misinterpretation in the 2008 budget.
Secondly, on the question of staff, here too Parliament has been able to provide a way of sensibly dealing with that process, rather than what might have been an immediate surge – as the Council wanted – of productivity gains but maybe not achieving very much. We have been able to ask the Commission – and it has agreed – for a proper screening process to be established by 30 April 2007 so that we can have a substantive justification for staff increases over the next few years. That will be very welcome as part of the conditions for release of the staff reserve will be a statement from the Commission in February next year. So we will know exactly what the legislative programme for the Union will be in February 2007.
Last but not least in the use of the reserve is the question of value for money. We had an excellent discussion and debate on 15 November at our last session with the Commissioner and the Secretary-General, who came to show exactly where we had taken lines in reserve and where we could now release them. We have very few of those lines left available now. That has been a very useful process in getting a much better perception as to where the lines are weak and where we have weak implementation. We welcome the Commission’s participation in that.
Looking ahead, it seems to me that we now have to implement this resolution on the proper implementation of the budget. Perhaps the Council could come along and sign the resolution on value for money. If it does not do it now, hopefully it will do so under the German Presidency.
We need to maintain our priorities. We have been very clear. We have taken on the priorities of the Financial Perspective. As we now look further forward to the 2008 and 2009 budget years, there is a lot of work to be done."@en1
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