Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2012-10-23-Speech-2-251-000"
| Predicate | Value (sorted: default) |
|---|---|
| rdf:type | |
| dcterms:Date | |
| dcterms:Is Part Of | |
| lpv:document identification number |
"en.20121023.16.2-251-000"2
|
| lpv:hasSubsequent | |
| lpv:speaker | |
| lpv:translated text |
"Madam President, I will try to react to the comments made in the interventions by the honourable Members concerning the Commission’s work programme.
The last issue, which was repeated by several speakers, is the situation concerning my former colleague, Commissioner Dalli and the tobacco directive. Concerning the resignation of Commissioner Dalli, it was quite clear that, after the Olaf investigation and the discussion of the Olaf report by the President of the Commission and the Commissioner, his position was untenable, especially vis-à-vis the reputation of the European Commission. Therefore, as you know, the process has already started for the appointment of the new Commissioner. I believe, after my initial contacts here in the European Parliament, that we can hold the hearing of the new Commissioner within a couple of weeks and that the new Commissioner could be in office very soon. I have already discussed the plan for the coming weeks with the Chair of the Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety. We will have a meeting with Mr Harbour in a couple of minutes. What I want to make absolutely sure is that the work which has been started will continue. All the trialogue sessions will continue as planned.
Concerning the tobacco directive, for the Commission it is absolutely vital that it is this legislator, this Parliament, which will work on the tobacco directive. We want to make absolutely sure that we will present a good proposal upon which I believe this Parliament can reach at least a first reading agreement.
Of course, it would be much more natural if the new Commissioner could start this process from the beginning, through the trialogues, until the end. I was very encouraged by the possible schedule for the appointment of the new Commissioner. I believe that the timescale will be very short, and I can assure you that it is a top priority for the Commission to present the tobacco directive in time for this Parliament to decide upon it.
I am very sorry that I was not able to deliver the text of the Commission’s work programme because it was approved just one-and-a-half hours ago. We had wanted to present it to the House immediately. However, now it has been adopted, I am sure that it will be available very soon, today.
Concerning the relationship between delegated and implementing acts, we have been working together with Mr Szájer on a common understanding on how to use delegated acts and how to use implementing acts. We both agree that the source of our proposals, whether we propose delegated or implementing acts, should be the Treaty, because it is very clear on what kind of policies you need delegated acts for and for what kind of policies you need implementing acts.
This was a topic we discussed at great length with the Conference of Presidents and with the Conference of Committee Chairs. What we agreed was that we need to coordinate much better in our legislative process, and much earlier on, because what happens sometimes is that the delegated versus implementing act issue becomes a bargaining chip at the end of negotiations, which is not correct. Very often this makes things legally unsound, and the Commission has very often had to approach the European Court of Justice to reverse some of the decisions which have been adopted in the legislative process following the choice in our review of the wrong legal instrument for a particular legislative proposal. A suggestion would be to cooperate closer early on, to respect the Treaty and not to use delegated or implementing acts as a bargaining chip at the end of the legislative process.
Concerning the regulatory burden, here we have absolutely the same view, which is that we need to reduce it. The Commission has already put on the legislative table proposals for reducing the administrative burden by more than 31 %. It is now our common task – and the Commission will take this very seriously – to see how this possibility is actually being used at Member State level. We are working together very intensely, but we do not always see all the simplifications we have introduced at European level trickle down to the national level. We have to continue to work on this together, so that the real reduction of the administrative burden is also felt at national level.
I agree with Mr Harbour that there is always something to learn and improve on when it comes to the impact assessments. I consider we have been doing this for some time already, and I am very glad that the European Parliament is also introducing its own capacity to perform impact assessments on the amendments proposed in Parliament. I believe that through mutual efforts we can really improve the quality of the overall impact assessments for our proposals.
Concerning our efficiency, for the year 2012 there is a proposal for 16 main initiatives. We have delivered eight already, and it is still not the end of the year. So I believe we will respect our traditional high level of fulfilment of our programmes. I have checked the figures, and in 2010-2011 we always delivered on over 90 % of what was in the programme. If we have slightly different figures, then let our experts get together so they can work on the same basis and arrive at the same figures.
Concerning the employment crisis, I fully agree with Enrique Guerrero Salom that this should be a top priority for the next year, as I indicated in my introductory remarks. This December we will introduce the youth employment package, as part of which we will propose the Youth Employment Guarantee Scheme. This will be based a little on the experience we have gathered through the work of the eight action teams we sent to the Member States with the highest youth unemployment. We believe that through the quick and swift reallocation of funds – which in most cases has already been done – we can create more than 400 000 jobs for young people that will be supported directly by the EU funds.
This morning we were discussing the MFF. I can tell you that in my remarks to the Council there is one line which is repeated in all my remarks – make sure that 25 % of the EU funds under the next financial perspective are devoted to the European Social Fund. The Commission is very clear on this. We are saying that any kind of reduction in that percentage is not acceptable. I hope that we will be able to convince the Member States of this, because I also see it as a reflection of our using EU support to create the conditions for youth and the elderly to be employed and to have proper qualifications."@en1
|
| lpv:unclassifiedMetadata | |
| lpv:videoURI |
Named graphs describing this resource:
The resource appears as object in 2 triples