Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2007-11-29-Speech-4-037"
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"en.20071129.4.4-037"2
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"Mr President, as you all know, the members of the Court of Auditors are nominated by the Council, for a six-year mandate, following consultation with Parliament. It is the Committee on Budgetary Control which is responsible for preparing the opinion of the Parliament.
On 13 November 2007, following the presentation of the Annual Report of the Court of which Mr Weber is President, various statements were made on
by a former Commission chief accountant claiming that 80% of the Community budget was still suspect. Immediately following this was a quote from Mr Weber, saying that that analysis constituted the more orthodox approach but that the quite different statement by Mr Kallas was also valid.
I would like to hear the truth and for Mr Weber to confirm whether these statements are his and, if not, I would like him to publish a denial and to send a copy to this House, so as to prevent the damage caused to public opinion by this type of contradiction, amongst the general public.
Returning to the content of my report, I would like to register my frustration at the fact that the Council – whose absence at this sitting, I repeat, is regrettable – has once again ignored the criteria laid down by Parliament in its resolution of 1992, with a view to achieving greater transparency.
Basically, the Council has ignored, in two cases, the recommendation not to exceed two mandates, in other words 12 years’ service, at the Court of Auditors. Worse, however, is its disregard of the recommendation of this Parliament about the need to strike a better balance at the Court between men and women. Whereas to date there are 5 women out of a total of 27 Members, it is now proposed that they be reduced to four. In this connection I feel once and for all that the Council should adopt special measures.
In this connection too we demand that the Council recognise that good relations between Parliament and the Court of Auditors are essential if the control system is to function properly. We should therefore receive the Council proposal, with its proposed nominations, in due time and be able to cooperate more closely with Members in the period prior to the decision.
Even more importantly, we would remind the Council of the need to respect the opinion of the European Parliament in order to avoid a repetition of what happened in 2004, following a negative opinion in respect of one of its proposed Members which was totally ignored by the Council.
With the future of the Court in mind, I would like to mention the concern, widely felt among Members of the European Parliament, about the efficacy of such an important body when it is governed by a Board of up to 27 members. We therefore await with some impatience the conclusion of the Court’s self-assessment exercise and in fact in my report I recommend that the Parliament should study it carefully at the end of 2008 when it is submitted, and that it should take up a position on the various options.
Meanwhile, however, improvements can be made and so I invite the Court of Auditors to use all means at its disposal to rationalise and simplify its work, in particular by using the options available under the current Treaty: for example the possibility of adopting reports by a majority and not always by consensus, and also the possibility of establishing panels, responsible for specific reports which do not therefore have to be processed by the entire Board.
Accordingly I recommend that, in adopting the proposal to approve the nominations of Members, with the provisos mentioned, the Parliament should express the wish that, at any rate, we should receive clarification on what I proposed previously.
The Court is currently composed of 27 members, from the Member States of the Union, and we are now preparing to renew the mandate of four candidates: David Bostock, for the United Kingdom; Maarten B. Engwirda, for the Netherlands; Ioannis Sarmas, for Greece; and Hubert Weber, for Austria; and to propose three new members, Michel Cretin, for France; Henri Grethen, for Luxembourg; and Harald Noack, for Germany.
During the procedure in the Committee on Budgetary Control, all candidates were approved but not all of them unanimously. However, we shall see that, subject to a few clarifications, in principle my final proposal is that, if there are no further comments, all these nominations should be approved.
Following the personal interviews of the three new candidates, I would like to emphasise the good showing made by Mr Cretin, the French candidate, who will bring to the Court his considerable experience in international auditing, both in connection with the UN and NATO. The Committee on Budgetary Control considered this experience to be a huge plus.
During the personal interviews of the four Members whose mandate is up for renewal, the most important topic was their opinion on the self-assessment process embarked upon by the Court of Auditors, which is due to terminate at the end of 2008, as well as the contribution of each candidate to the current debate about the need to reform the way in which the Court is organised, especially since enlargement, given that it currently has a Board of 27 members, and also with a view to enhancing its effectiveness and modernisation.
In this context, I would like to say that Mr Sarmas was particularly impressive and he was supported unanimously by the Committee, I imagine because he was particularly cooperative during the approval process.
On the other hand, the understanding reached between Mr Engwirda and the Government of the Netherlands was not entirely transparent and this aroused some suspicions in the Committee.
As for Mr Weber, currently President of the Court of Auditors, I would like to clear up one point, before the vote, which is of particular concern to me and which arose after the confirmation hearing in the Committee on Budgetary Control, and so I think that this forum offers an excellent opportunity to clarify it.
Mr President, with this in mind, I would like to ask you to allow Mr Weber to speak when I have finished in order to clarify the following matter."@en1
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"BBC News"1
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