Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2007-04-24-Speech-2-012"
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"en.20070424.4.2-012"2
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".
Ladies and gentlemen, Commissioner Kallas, we are finally reaching the end of the budgetary procedure for 2005, which was preceded by its drawing up, its approval, its execution and, subsequently, its discharge.
Furthermore, there is a very important issue relating to national declarations. The DAS, as we MEPs see it, is a road that leads nowhere, and those of us who have followed the statements of assurance very closely have known that for twelve years.
It is impossible today to establish the legality of underlying operations in the Member States, particularly in the Structural Funds.
We must therefore do something to improve the quality of auditing and the involvement of the Member States and we are therefore asking the Council for a national declaration of management that covers all co-managed funds, based on the declarations of the different national bodies responsible for the management of spending.
Finally, Mr President, although my report covers other things, I believe that we could achieve a positive DAS over the coming years, which is necessary for the Community institutions and, in particular, crucial for public opinion, which wants to see reliability, transparency and control right down to the last euro of the public funds managed both by the Commission and by the Member States.
I must say that, from a budgetary point of view, 2005 has not been a bad year. It has been a difficult year, with the European Commission and the College of Commissioners having to face rather difficult circumstances, since this was the first full budget of the enlarged Union and, furthermore, the first budget entirely executed by this new College of Commissioners.
I must therefore begin by saying that the European Commission has not done a bad job. I therefore propose that we grant discharge for implementation of the Community budget for the financial year 2005, and that is what will be put to the honourable Members in the vote.
That does not mean, of course, that there is no strong and well-founded criticism, both of certain directorates-general and of a structural nature, and with regard to some of the issues of financial control which should be improved by the Commission over the coming years, which may be very difficult to resolve.
I would also like to point out that the Commission has reacted well to the report by the Court of Auditors and has moved forward several lines of its new action plan which I hope will allow for positive control over the coming years.
I have essentially based my resolution on the issue of national declarations. National declarations on the management of Community funding are very important to this Parliament. They were created in 2003 and they are intended to offer a guarantee that Member States have effective auditing systems for Community spending.
Furthermore, they should be signed by someone with a degree of authority at national level and, though the Treaty states that the European Commission is responsible for managing the budget, we must not forget that 80% of it is managed in the Member States.
We therefore believed that it was necessary to launch a new initiative on national declarations. We support what we believe to be the courageous initiatives of certain Member States – and I point in particular to the Netherlands and the United Kingdom – which have launched, within the Council, these ideas on national control declarations which may not be followed by other Member States, since their territorial distribution and organisation is different. It is a step forward, however. What we propose in the report is that the form that future declarations may take be left open so that they can reflect the realities of the political systems of each Member State.
As a fundamental idea, however, we in the European Parliament want these national declarations to go ahead, because that will be the only way to provide the Member States with some genuine responsibility for control of Community funds, which is the true basis for this statement of discharge."@en1
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