Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2009-11-24-Speech-2-364"
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"en.20091124.34.2-364"2
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"Mr President, we are elected Members of the European Parliament, but our voters do not know what is going on behind the scenes. In April 2009, the Budgetary Control Committee decided to postpone discharge to the Council. Even if the Court of Auditors had not criticised the accounts, the Committee claimed to have enough reasons to proceed that way. However, after this Committee met with the Swedish Presidency in September, and some written answers were given to Parliament’s questions, Mr Søndergaard, the rapporteur on the Council discharge for 2007, still issued a report which, even with much goodwill, would not have allowed discharge to be given. However, a political decision was taken to give discharge and the compromising paragraphs were watered down.
The Committee intends to recommend discharge on expectations for the future. If the people who bothered to vote for us in June knew the following: that there is a consensus not to rock the boat on the basis of a gentleman’s agreement from 1970; that the internal auditor of the Council would not be invited to the Budgetary Control Committee because then, the Council would be able to invite the internal auditor of the European Parliament, with uncertain consequences; and that the politically appointed Court of Auditors did not have any comments on the Council’s internal auditor’s report of April 2008, what would they say?
Back in 2002, when I was Chief Accountant of the European Commission, the then Director-General for Budgets stated, in a letter to the then internal auditor of the Commission, that the discharge procedure was an interinstitutional game and nothing more. Are we going to continue to avoid talking about the gorilla in the middle of the room because we are afraid to lose privileges obtained after years of silence? We can choose to expose and end hypocrisy when we vote for the 2007 Council discharge. I think you know what I choose, and I hope that you will join me in refusing discharge to the Council."@en1
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