Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2011-05-10-Speech-2-009-000"
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"en.20110510.4.2-009-000"2
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"Mr President, Commissioner Šemeta, ladies and gentlemen, the process we are dealing with today – that is, the discharge for the expenditure of the European Commission – is an essential process. In recent years it may perhaps have been taken rather lightly, but in fact granting discharge for all the expenditure of the European Commission for the year 2009 is an essential task of the European Parliament.
We are aware that 80% of these funds were spent as a shared responsibility between the Commission and the Member States. Nonetheless, the overall responsibility for this process lies with the Commission. I would therefore like to address you quite directly, Commissioner Šemeta. Firstly, I would like to thank you. I would like to make that clear at the outset. I would like to include my fellow Members who have worked very well together and who have supported Parliament’s position very strongly. However, the discussions that we had were very intense, Commissioner Šemeta. You have only shared responsibility for 2009, yet you have thrown yourself into it. In some cases we have had heated arguments and have gone into very great detail. I should like to emphasise, however, that you have put the discharge at the top of the agenda in the College, in the Commission. The President of the Commission, Mr Barroso, spent over an hour negotiating with us on the details. You yourself played a major part in changing the attitude of the Commission to the discharge and the attitude of the Commission officials to this whole process. I am grateful to you for having said quite openly that the pressure that Parliament has exerted this year will in the final event help you to improve transparency. You now have in your hands a means of exerting pressure not just on the Member States, but also on your own administration – which has until now been a little lax in dealing with these matters.
However, I also think that we need to utilise this momentum that we have created together, Commissioner Šemeta – and I would ask you to pass on our thanks to President Barroso – and this dynamism for the other discharge reports. For there is one thing that must be clear to us, which is that for the 16th time in succession the European Court of Auditors has not given a positive statement. That is not insignificant, as it means that you have not actually met the criteria for 16 years running. Nonetheless, we have set key criteria that I would like to mention briefly and that you have met. I am pleased to have Mr Fjellner, the forthcoming rapporteur on the budget discharge, at my side. I hope that he will continue the work with the same impetus.
The Commission has begun – and this is crucial, because we are after all talking about 80% shared responsibility here – quite clearly to state erroneous expenditure in the accounts of the European Union for 2009. It has listed these items openly. Building on this new transparency, therefore, we have set five key requirements. The first is a long-running issue – an old favourite – that Parliament has been dealing with for a long time, and that is the national management declarations. As a representative of the Group of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe, I am also pleased to be able to point out that this has been brought about by Dutch members of the ALDE Group in particular. We are talking here about the confirmation by the finance ministers that EU funds have been spent correctly in their home countries.
We do not yet have these national management declarations, but we want to get them. In this respect I will be building on my cooperation with Mr Fjellner in the future. Commissioner, you have promised that we will look into whether stricter conditions can be introduced by the next financial perspective in 2014. It is important that you have drawn up guidelines – we are grateful to you for that – that you have shown which countries have actually provided national management declarations – it is not many: basically, only the Netherlands meets the requirements in full – and that you have instructed the Directorates General to show for the first time in the activity report for 2010 what components will be present in a future national administrative declaration, even if this will only take place at working level.
The second key requirement is that the commissioners must also accept greater responsibility. You have proposed that the Directorates General be obliged to inform their commissioners of irregularities and I want to thank you for that.
The third, and essential, requirement was for the instrument of stopping or suspending payments to be used to a greater extent. You have listed clear criteria for when you will do that. You have shown us clearly how you have already done this in the last couple of years. Thank you for such openness and transparency, which helps us exert pressure on the Member States. Thank you also for the guidelines that will help the Member States. In addition, you promised that when evaluating the performance audit you will set clear standards; this is an obligation that you have anyway under the Treaty of Lisbon. Thank you also for involving us to a considerable extent in the performance audit process. You have also promised to make simplifications, because often the material is so complex that people hide behind the rules and indulge in abuse. Thank you also for having set very specific requirements for the next financial perspective.
I advocate that we continue along this path. I believe that Parliament can make a great contribution towards raising the Commission to another level. I wish Mr Fjellner all the best and would like to extend my warm thanks to my parliamentary staff, particularly Bent Adamsen and Dominykas Mordas."@en1
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