Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-11-20-Speech-4-016"

Predicate	Value (sorted: default)
rdf:type	lpv_eu:Speech2
dcterms:Date	"2008-11-20"^^xsd:date2
dcterms:Is Part Of	lp_eu:Presentation of the Court of Auditors' annual report - 20072
dcterms:Language	"fi"^^xsd:language2
lpv:document identification number	"en.20081120.3.4-016"2
lpv:hasSubsequent	lp_eu:2008-11-20-Speech-4-0172
lpv:speaker	lp:Esko Seppänen2
lpv:spokenAs	substitute; CONT (2007-01-31--2009-07-13)3 vice-chair; Delegation to the EU-Russia Parliamentary Cooperation Committee (2004-09-21--2009-07-13)3 unknown; Vasemmistoliitto (2004-07-20--2009-07-13)3 substitute; Delegation to the EU-Kazakhstan, EU-Kyrgyzstan and EU-Uzbekistan Parliamentary Cooperation Committees, and for relations with Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Mongolia (2004-09-15--2009-07-13)3 member_of_the_bureau; EUL/NGL (2004-07-20--2009-07-13)3 substitute; ITRE (2007-01-31--2009-07-13)3 member; BUDG (2007-01-31--2009-07-13)3
lpv:translated text	". Mr President, Commissioner, President of the European Court of Auditors, Vice-President of the Commission Siim Kallas has, generally speaking, done good work to improve budgetary control, and especially to increase administrative transparency. Public awareness of agricultural subsidies is a good example of that. The European Court of Auditors partly agrees. There are of course areas for comment, particularly on the use of agricultural and regional development aid. Responsibility for these lies mainly with the Member States. Something of a split might be discerned in the Court of Auditors’ report: the slightly more correct northern net contributors as opposed to the southern beneficiaries that are rather more prone to abuse. The split is also obviously affected by the volumes of cash involved. In the south there is more to distribute and control than in the north. To ensure that the wrong generalisations are not made, it is important that the Court of Auditors shows precisely in its reports where any abuse has occurred so that confusion and the wrong generalisations are avoided as a result. I would like to focus attention on something to which the competence of the European Court of Auditors does not extend and which is also a grey area from a national standpoint. This is the Athena Fund set up in 2004, which falls within the competence of the Member States, though not the EU. The Member States pay into the Fund out of their own defence budgets for combined military operations that fall outside the scope of EC competence. These operations work, on the one hand, on the NATO principle of ‘costs lie where they fall’. On the other hand, there is this Athena scheme, whose financing is secret. This sort of military operation on the part of EU countries should be brought under democratic control. When the report by the European Court of Auditors is being considered, our group will be paying special attention to the legality of the Council’s budget, which for Parliament has up till now been a grey area."@en1
lpv:videoURI	<go to Events_and_structure europarl>2

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