Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2007-11-29-Speech-4-011"
Predicate | Value (sorted: default) |
---|---|
rdf:type | |
dcterms:Date | |
dcterms:Is Part Of | |
dcterms:Language | |
lpv:document identification number |
"en.20071129.3.4-011"2
|
lpv:hasSubsequent | |
lpv:speaker | |
lpv:spokenAs | |
lpv:translated text |
"Mr President, Hans-Gert Pöttering, I am pleased that you are attending this debate, underlining the importance which the Parliament attaches to the auditing of its accounts, and that Vice-President Kallas and President Weber are also here, but where is the Council? Where is the speaker who can tell us what the Council is doing with all the suggestions and comments that the President of the Court of Auditors, Vice-President Kallas and I myself have been putting to the Council?
Thank you, Mr President, for attending this debate.
I would like to begin by thanking the Court of Auditors for its excellent work, especially chapter 2 of its report, which is very well presented. You are getting better at this job all the time and are helping not only the Parliament, but also the man in the street, to realise what it costs to run the European Union.
Farmers should be congratulated because now that we are reducing direct payments to them they have managed to improve their management of the money they receive significantly.
However, such praise cannot be heaped on structural funds. It is now three years since this Parliament said that the Council, the great absentee, should be involved in order to account for how it spends the greater part of the budget which it controls. One thing is clear: it is now obligatory, under the new Financial Regulation, for Member States to submit their summary national management declarations. It is not an option, it is mandatory. They have to do this before mid-February next year; and as we know – and here we agree with Mr Kallas – the Member States are unwilling to do so: it seems as though they are not required to present accounts. If they have an obligation, they should be the first ones to set an example. You said that only six Member States are accounting for how they recover funds. That is scandalous, it deserves a headline: only six Member States are telling us what they are doing about recovering funds which they have misused. That really is a scandal.
To sum up, I would like to tell you that this Parliament will continue its work; may you continue with yours. You and Mr Kallas have our full support in continuing to strive towards the goal of a positive DAS, and we take our share of the blame for all those particularly burdensome procedures; we are to blame there because sometimes we ask for the impossible. We offer our collaboration in order to simplify procedures as far as possible.
Thank you, Mr Weber, for your magnificent report."@en1
|
lpv:unclassifiedMetadata |
Named graphs describing this resource:
The resource appears as object in 2 triples