Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-04-22-Speech-2-030"
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"en.20080422.4.2-030"2
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"Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, on behalf of the Committee on Employment and Social Affairs, and with regard to budget management, I would like to begin by expressing our concern at the fact that outstanding budgetary commitments have continued to rise and that this, combined with the replacement of the n+2 rule by n+3, a change which some Member States are due to implement for the period 2007 to 2013, might worsen the situation, with the result that funds may take longer to reach their ultimate recipients. What we are dealing with here are policies that directly affect citizens, such as the European Social Fund, and the delays could have disastrous effects in terms of the efficient and successful use of the funds.
As regards structural policies, we agree with the Court of Auditors on the need to improve control systems so as to forestall errors in projects carried out in the area of Structural Funds. More supervision, more efficient audits and effective monitoring of projects from beginning to end are needed to enable any shortcomings or errors to be remedied in good time. For this reason, the European Commission should have the logistical capacity and adequate resources to make feedback mechanisms genuinely operational and to keep auditing procedures properly under review.
However, it is essential to use meaningful indicators and targets which should lend themselves to comparison and, as far as possible, aggregation in the short term, so that the analysis of structural policy trends can be carried out in such a way as to avoid what would inevitably be rough and hazy assessments that would not therefore be very conclusive concerning the effective application of those funds.
I consider it important to mention the timeliness of the Commission’s recommendation to Member States that they should make use of the simplifications provided for in the new Structural Funds regulations, for instance by using flat-rate amounts for indirect costs under the European Social Fund.
I should also like to congratulate the European Commission on the investment in the EURES network and to applaud the virtues of holding the European Year of Workers’ Mobility. They naturally highlighted the mobility-related issues we all recognise and still face. As for the European agencies that are being analysed by the Committee on Employment and Social Affairs, I would just like to thank them briefly for the work they have done and, as we have all seen, we can on the whole give a very positive assessment of their activities.
Nevertheless, I would like to conclude by drawing attention to the need to increase the appropriation for the Dublin Agency, which is now entrusted with analysing anticipated changes in employment and the business world, the aim being to bolster the socio-economic project through the assessment of applications under the European Globalisation Adjustment Fund. We all know how important this could be. It is therefore an area of the utmost sensitivity and importance, which should merit special attention from the European Union, namely by means of this analysis conducted by the Dublin Agency, which may in some way help to anticipate the potential crises that we can all envisage on the horizon in any one of the 27 Member States."@en1
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