Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-12-12-Speech-2-250"
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"en.20061212.42.2-250"2
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".
Mr President, Madam President-in-Office of the Council, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, today is a great day for this House. For all of two years, we have been working together on the Financial Regulation, and have, most recently, been cooperating outstandingly well with the Commission in this.
This House has made it clear to all the importance that we attach to the legislative process associated with the Financial Regulation; what we were aiming for was better budgeting, the correction of the 2002 reform’s excesses, and the taking on board of justified criticisms of highly bureaucratic procedures and laborious ways of getting things done, and in that we have succeeded, with the help of the Members who sit on the Committee on Budgets and the Committee on Budgetary Control, primarily my good friend Mr Pahor, the members of our working party, the secretariats and my personal assistant, to all of whom I extend the warmest of thanks. The Budget DG, under Commissioner Grybauskaitė, has also played its part in a most felicitous and sympathetic way, so warm thanks go to them as well.
The Council, too, started off by playing the game, only then to suffer a failure of nerve; that was actually a shame, since that is no way to treat friends, so let us hope that they do not do the same with the implementing regulations. The improvement of monitoring quality in the Member States is a recurrent issue in this Europe of ours, and it calls for more commitment on the part of the Council; perhaps Mrs Wideroos, the minister, will be so good as to affirm that the Council accepts the result from conciliation with this House achieved on 21 November, for if she does not, this House will not be voting on the 2007 Budget on Thursday.
Having negligently and wilfully interfered in the interinstitutional balance, the Finnish Presidency of the Council leaves a truly bitter taste in this House’s collective mouth, and has denied itself the great success of its presidency that the achievement of real de-bureaucratisation in Europe – mainly on the basis of our amendments – would have represented, but we are very grateful that the Council has been supportive of this and has moved it forward, particularly in relation to the need for more customer-friendly administration, for more transparency, for improved monitoring to protect European funds and for a database listing those criminals who, having acted to the EU's detriment, are excluded from receiving EU funds for a period of ten years, all of which are milestones on the road to better management of EU funds, and in which you – like us – can in fact take pride.
We will give these things tangible form in the implementing regulations and make them usable; in doing this, we are guided by the Financial Regulation and by the need for these quite new items to be dealt with one by one. What I need to clarify is that the enactment of the implementing regulations is a matter for the Commission alone; Parliament and the Council can do no more than be consulted. We see it as unacceptable that the Commission should be as readily put under pressure as you have tried to do over recent days, for by doing so you will end up curtailing this House’s right to be consulted, and it is only because the monitoring of EU funds, the recovery of them and the enforcement of uniform transparency requirements are a problem that we have tabled amendments in relation to them to the Financial Regulation.
I urge the representatives of the Member States to once and for all come up with some answers to these problems, instead of imitating the three monkeys in hearing nothing, saying nothing, and seeing nothing. This House will not be denied its right to voice an opinion when what we are trying to do is to play a constructive role in the handling of the EU’s money. We have learned our lesson from the past and wish to forge an alliance with all those who want to show that they have learned it too."@en1
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