Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2007-10-23-Speech-2-256"
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"en.20071023.23.2-256"2
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".
Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, the Committee on Budgets recommends for the first reading in the Plenary a 2008 budget of EUR 129.6 billion for commitments and EUR 124.2 billion for payments, with strict observance of all our agreements and commitments, both from the multi-annual programmes and the financial perspective and, I might add, well below the ceilings that we agreed in this multi-year plan, in a spirit of budgetary discipline and, at the same time, linked with an offer to the Council to resolve current issues such as Galileo and the financing of foreign and security policy sustainably. I would like to express my sincere thanks to the rapporteurs, Mr Itälä and Mr Virrankoski, who, together with the coordinators and staff, did an excellent job preparing for the first reading.
Firstly, the Parliament budget. Between the vote by the Committee on Budgets and the vote in the Plenary, a process of conciliation has been under way in consultation with the Bureau of this House, with close involvement by the administration. As part of this process, we were able to resolve several contradictory positions judiciously and satisfactorily. However, I would like to add at this point that a Bureau and an administration must be willing to face questions and criticism from the Committee on Budgets, as that is part of our task. Part of the conflict that we discuss every year was able to be resolved by creating a deadline of two to three weeks between presentation of the administrative proposal on the Parliament budget and the decision by the Bureau, to enable the Groups to be listened to more closely at the beginning of the process rather than at the end of the procedure.
Commissioner, in your letter dated 17 October, you again laid out the implementation of the budget as at the end of September. You showed where it was working well and where it was running into difficulty, where some programmes had possibly been implemented too late, and where the Commission itself had practised a little too much micromanagement regarding other questions for the Member States. However, overall, the report showed implementation has improved since the May report. If the Commission now wishes to remain credible, it can no longer claim late implementation or other difficulties for 2008 to justify being in arrears with payments or commitments in the implementation of the 2008 budget.
Today we can say that, with the agreement between the institutions on the agencies – starting with the German Presidency and concluded by the Portuguese Presidency – and thanks to the exceptional work done by our permanent rapporteur Jutta Haug, the development of the agencies has been firmly re-established so that, in future, no agencies will be set up without adequate cost-benefit analyses and without clarifying whether they add any value. Therefore this must be continued in the code of conduct that is being agreed for the executive agencies. At this point, Commissioner, I must also say that this year, we dealt very circumspectly with the Commission’s administration budget, but that does not have to be the case every year. However, the continued assessment of staff positions, screening, development – prudently and without exaggeration, but carried out very transparently – those stay on the agenda for us.
Mr President, we have taken a very clear position on Galileo. When we talked about the Reform Treaty this morning and gave it solid support, then in future that will be called the Community method. If Member States believe they can rely on a hodgepodge of financing or on financing outside the Community budget then, in the light of this development in Europe, that is simply absurd and does not make sense.
In my second point I would like to speak about the financing of the Common Foreign and Security Policy. Without Parliament, the CFSP would already be bankrupt, for we would have to front up with approximately EUR 90 million, according to the Decision of the Heads of State or Government in December 2005. When I now hear that we may have to go well beyond what the Council and the Commission put forward to us, with Palestine and Kosovo to be added as well, then we are prepared to find a way through. Obviously we will also have to talk about the flexibility instrument, on the basis of the vote. This also applies to further acknowledgement of Parliament’s interests, as expressly – and correctly – called for by the Committee on Development.
The Presidency must realise that, with the exception of Galileo and the Common Foreign and Security Policy, everything can be decided by Parliament on its own. Therefore my urgent recommendation: the Council needs to get a sufficient mandate so that we can put both Galileo and the Foreign and Security Policy on a firm footing – hopefully not only for 2008. If this is not achieved, then we are all going to have to have further sittings during the 2008 budget. The door is open for all negotiations, but we expect a clear signal from the Council that it is taking action on these two key questions. Either way, from the point of view of this Parliament, there will be a 2008 budget."@en1
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