Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2007-04-24-Speech-2-051"
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"en.20070424.4.2-051"2
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"Madam President, I would like to congratulate the rapporteurs in this particular debate, especially Salvador Garriga Polledo for the discharge report on the Commission, on which I would like to focus most of my comments.
Commissioner, I think that we sense in Parliament and in this debate that real progress has been made in the Commission under Mr Barroso to be able to ensure that European citizens have proper accountability of funds. However, we know from the Court of Auditors report that even if the underlying transactions were legal and regular, for certain parts of the budget there are material errors which still remain for elements of the operational programmes, and therefore there is no statement of assurance for the 12th year running which, I think we all underline, is totally unacceptable. The question is, how do we get there?
Under the Treaties, the Commission stipulates that the Commission is responsible for managing the budget, but we know 80%, as other colleagues have said, is managed by the Member States. It is logical that no statement of assurance will be given until the Member States produce their national declarations. I welcome the Presidency of the Council coming at least at the end of our debate, because this refers to the Presidency and its responsibility in enabling national declarations to be done.
Obviously, in the interinstitutional agreement we have made some progress in asking Member States to have national declarations. I agree with our rapporteur that we need to have the Commission proposal to encourage Member States to do so, but one gets the feeling that Member States do not care for EU monies spent in their countries because they say it is not theirs. But of course it is! It is the taxpayers’ money and should be properly accounted for.
I therefore come to the conclusion, looking at the excellent report by Mr Garriga Polledo, that should there be an intergovernmental conference later this year, we have to make it a legally binding requirement for all Member States to produce national management declarations, because clearly the legal basis at this stage is insufficient and some Member States just slough it off and say that they do not worry because they are not concerned. But is concerns everybody."@en1
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