Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/1999-09-13-Speech-1-054"
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"en.19990913.5.1-054"2
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"Mr President, many Europeans were awaiting this report to see when the hard core, the driving force which the Commission is supposed to be, will finally begin to function at a certain amount of speed.
We want a Commission which is strong and independent. Therefore, we want you to be prepared to say no when you are asked to carry out work for which you do not have the resources. You must not accept commitments which you are not able to fulfil effectively.
In your hearing, Mr Kinnock, we heard that there are 500 posts, which have been authorised by Parliament, which are still vacant. Perhaps this was pressure? Distribution of power? Lack of transparency in recruitment procedures?
It is essential to evaluate the merits of the personnel who work for the Commission, to have a genuine career policy.
I have noticed that, amongst the 90 recommendations of the Independent Experts, some describe an Anglo-Saxon style administration, where more responsibility falls to managers.
It is necessary to decentralise and clarify competences. Not everybody is responsible for everything, neither in the management carried out in the Member States, nor in the Regions nor in the Commission.
Therefore, Mr Kinnock, time is running out. The European citizens cannot allow us to fail in this pursuit. Let us work steadily and relentlessly because, as I have said, we cannot continue to be a source of scandal for the citizens of Europe. This is not good for Europe and not good for any of us.
This is not the time to deal with details, since in the Committee on Budgetary Control, thanks to the proposal which we have made, we will have the opportunity to closely observe the work of Commissioner Kinnock.
He tells us that he will respond effectively. Perhaps we will have our first opportunity to see whether this is the case in a month’s time when the Justice and Home Affairs Council takes place.
I do not know whether or not you will have time to include in the agenda of that Council meeting some of the questions put forward in the report of the Committee of Independent Experts which I believe are supported by general consensus.
There is no doubt that the fight against fraud should be one of the objectives which we aim for immediately. I believe that we should offer OLAF the necessary resources as soon as possible so that it can carry out its work efficiently, but it is nevertheless essential that budgetary control goes much further than the sixth part which is directly controlled by the Commission. We will have to pursue those 1,327 cases which in 1997 were included in the former UCLAF.
The current legal framework is incoherent and incomplete. We will have to work, steadily and relentlessly, to remove that permanent suspicion of fraud which, unfortunately, engulfs the activities of the Community institutions.
But I do not wish to dwell on these issues, since I agree that the enormous majority of people who work for Europe are competent and honest. It is perhaps not the resources lost through fraud or corruption which should worry us most but rather those lost through the absence of a personnel policy, as claimed by the Committee of Independent Experts.
Those inefficiencies, those mistakes and that lack of motivation which affect the work of the people who work for the Commission must be, from our point of view, one of the principle areas of activity of the reform of the Commission.
Chapter 6 of the report of the Committee of Independent Experts, which we have not had time to study in detail, demands absolute transparency. It demands it, perhaps, because we have never had it. There has certainly never been transparency in the policies of recruitment, promotion or mobility."@en1
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