Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2011-05-10-Speech-2-033-000"
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"en.20110510.4.2-033-000"2
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"Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, there are five reports I would like to comment on. First of all, the Commission.
I very much appreciate my fellow member Mr Chatzimarkakis’s approach. I think that he has done a brilliant job of handling this discharge exercise. In a very targeted way, he has focused in advance on a number of questions, he has put six questions to the Commission and I have to say that we have achieved what we asked for. I also have to thank the Commission. This is my 12th discharge exercise. I believe this must be the first time that we have worked together in such a constructive spirit; not only Commissioner Šemeta, but also individual commissioners in charge of their own remits have really invested time on this discharge. They have met both the shadow rapporteurs and the lead rapporteur on several occasions and, thanks to their constructive dialogue, I think that we have achieved a great deal.
I agree to a large extent with what Mr Gerbrandy has said. These are times for saving and we therefore need to be prudent about how we spend our money. Eighty per cent of the European budget is, indeed, spent in Member States and managed by Member States. President-in-Office of the Council, we must finally have this political responsibility for shared management of EU funds in place. For that reason, we are still demanding that Member States submit their national declarations of assurance. For me, that is a vitally important demand.
There is also a need for better control. I think that Member States should carry out audits of the funds they receive from the EU more intensively than has been the case to date. The lead rapporteur has also paid a lot of attention to finding out where funds have been used improperly and recovering them, as well as to introducing control mechanisms. The way I see it, that area does indeed deserve a great deal of attention and the comments he has made should provide the basis for the next discharge exercise under Mr Fjellner’s rapporteurship.
Moving to the European Parliament: I see that our Secretary-General is sitting next to the Vice-President. I have to offer explicit thanks to Mr Welle. I was the discharge rapporteur for the last exercise. There was some tension between me and the Secretariat-General. Though, at the time, I wrote a rather stringent report, I have to thank Mr Welle because he and his administration have, very diligently, correctly answered all the questions I had put to them and put a great deal of effort into this work. I believe that, eventually, the tension that may have existed between us has led to a better result and probably to a better European Parliament budget.
When we talk about the European Parliament’s budget, what I also want to impress on my colleagues here is that we have to do away with the culture of ever more, ever more and never enough. As an institution, we should be setting an example, which means that we should also be bold enough to save. However, let me add a side comment on that point. I have rather grave reservations about the Museum of European History, in particular, not about the content of the project in itself, but about the costs associated with it. Obviously, it is good that we are going to have such a museum, but what disturbs me greatly about this is that, in this plenary chamber, we have never really had a serious debate about this project. And yet, if we add everything up, we are going to spend more or less EUR 136 million on the Museum of European History. That is a lot of money, ladies and gentlemen, but we have never had a serious debate about it. We have never debated where this museum should be located and what it should look like. All of it is happening behind closed doors, often in the inner sanctum of the Bureau, and, as a democrat, I cannot accept that.
Let me turn now to the Lux film prize: Mr Itälä has made several comments on this prize in his report and, by the way, I congratulate him on the work that he has done. I have to say that my group sets great store by the Lux prize; though we are now most certainly prepared to take on board a number of critical comments about the functioning of the prize, we do consider it valuable that the European Parliament is supporting this project, because that means valuable film projects are getting support.
I also want to mention Mr Stavrakakis and one of his reports about the Council. I am now addressing directly the President-in-Office of the Council, the Hungarian Presidency. I find it unbelievable that the Council, which has always demanded that others act transparently, has obviously been much more reserved when it comes to itself. Our demand is very simple, President-in-Office: as Parliament, as the body approving the discharge, we want access to all documents. We want an open debate about the Council’s budget. We do not want to talk about the content of the Council’s budget and say: you are allowed to do this and you are not allowed to do that, but what we do want is transparency about how the Council is spending its money because the Council’s budget is different now from what it used to be 30 years ago and consists of a great deal more than just a number of administrative expenses.
Finally, I would just like to comment on the European Medicines Agency. We have problems there. We have postponed the discharge, because EMEA is clearly having problems in terms of procurement procedures. Its procurement procedures for several projects have been fraught with errors, which corresponds to the significant amount of EUR 30 million. Moreover, there have been issues surrounding conflicts of interest of EMEA’s experts and staff. I believe, now that the discharge has been postponed, we will have a debate on this at some point before the autumn and I hope that, with that debate, we will be able to put an end to conflicts of interest within EMEA."@en1
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