Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-04-22-Speech-2-027"
| Predicate | Value (sorted: default) |
|---|---|
| rdf:type | |
| dcterms:Date | |
| dcterms:Is Part Of | |
| dcterms:Language | |
| lpv:document identification number |
"en.20080422.4.2-027"2
|
| lpv:hasSubsequent | |
| lpv:speaker | |
| lpv:spokenAs | |
| lpv:translated text |
"−
Mr President, I shall begin by discussing discharge regarding the European Development Fund. Many of you here were perhaps expecting another tall, Nordic young man to be doing this job, namely our colleague Alexander Stubb, but, as some of you will know, Alexander is unable to be here with us today as he has been appointed Finland’s new Minister of Foreign Affairs. He therefore asked me to take over and present his work and his report here today. I believe that I am speaking for the majority here when I say that we are sad to lose Alexander, but that it is great news for Alexander and especially great news for Finland.
However, I would like to start by congratulating him on the work he has done here on the European Development Fund. Work in committee went very well, and it is a united committee which is discussing discharging the development funds today. The European Development Funds are, of course, one of the means of promoting democracy and economic development in the ACP (Africa, Caribbean and Pacific) States. It is for this reason that I think it is gratifying to be able to see that the money is being used in a correct and responsible manner. In 2006 they had considerable resources, EUR 3 billion in commitments, and managed to pay out just under 90% of this.
However, the fact that here today we are pleased to be able to grant, and propose the granting of discharge to the Commission which has managed these development funds – and this is something we really are pleased about – does not mean that there are no challenges or that there are no areas which we need to work on in the future. I would just like to bring up a few of these. For example, unlike last year, we can state that the Court of Auditors did not present an entirely clean statement of assurance, but pointed out a number of problems, for example regarding evidence of transactions which could have been better documented and regarding payments from different delegations. However, I would like to give the Commission credit for having taken these problems seriously and presented concrete, correct and important solutions to these challenges.
Furthermore, in our report we also highlight the problems incurred by the delay in implementing the modern IT system. This is a matter which we take seriously, and we hope that the Commission is working on it further.
Enough of the more administrative and economic aspects, as there are also a number of politically important issues which I would like to raise. Firstly, the fact that the work of the European Development Fund could be made considerably easier if it were incorporated in the ordinary budget. Similarly, we believe that if we had
financial regulation which controlled all current and future development funds, that would also make work easier.
That is enough about the European Development Fund. I would like to take this opportunity to briefly mention something about discharge of the independent agencies. I bring this up partly because I have been responsible for this work in the Group of the European People’s Party and European Democrats, but possibly mainly because the rapporteur, as we heard just now, has an unusual attitude, to say the least, and has not exactly taken the line the committee chose to follow. I think it is very strange that Hans-Peter Martin has not chosen to remove his name from all these reports, considering that it is not his opinion which we will be voting on in plenary here today.
If, nevertheless, I am to say something about the work itself, about some of the important opinions that, despite everything, we have in these reports – and which we have obtained thanks to successful and close cooperation between the Socialist Group, our group, the Group of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe and the Group of the Greens/European Free Alliance – I would just like to highlight the fact that we grant discharge because we think that there are grounds in the Court of Auditors’ statement for approving the management of the finances of these independent agencies. However, alongside that, there are also problems there, which we hope will be worked on further. This particularly involves all the institutions – the Council, the Commission and the European Parliament – being better at examining the agencies’ requests. I hope that everyone will take responsibility for this.
I will return next year, when I will be the rapporteur on this issue and hope to be able to discuss it with the Commission in greater depth."@en1
|
| lpv:unclassifiedMetadata |
Named graphs describing this resource:
The resource appears as object in 2 triples