Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/1999-09-14-Speech-2-152"
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"en.19990914.6.2-152"2
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".
Mr President, I would like firstly to express my agreement with Chairman Wynn’s words on the timely nature of this debate. This is a debate taking place between the Council and Parliament. As far as I know, the Council-in-Office is not currently involved with the appointment procedures. I think that this is a shame, because I would have been delighted to appoint Mrs Siimes. But this is not our role. Tomorrow we will be appointing the incoming Commission. I am also delighted to have this last opportunity to deal with Mr Liikanen in his present role, before the metamorphosis which will have taken him, the day after tomorrow to a new post. I would like to take the opportunity this debate has given to me to say that although our exchanges have sometimes been rather harsh, we have always appreciated the talent, seriousness and the extremely open and cordial nature which have characterised the way we have worked together.
You are insulting the present, because you are making no provision for the efforts necessary for credit payments.
You are insulting the future finally; by the way you are ignoring or treating indifferently the high stakes which await us in the areas of administrative reform and retirement.
So we will be having a constructive dialogue, Madam President. I have confidence in your ability to co-operate. But I want you to know that our dialogue will be difficult. We will not accept the interinstitutional agreement that we signed and ratified becoming a yoke around our neck. Co-operation, yes. The sacrifice of the European Union’s fundamental priorities, no. We will certainly ask you for a revision of the Financial Perspective whenever this proves necessary.
Basically, Mr President, Madam President-in-Office of the Council, ladies and gentlemen, I have to say that the Commission’s draft budget did not really impress us, and that we are disappointed with the Council’s budget proposal. The reason this draft failed to impress us is that it was brought in at a time when the Commission was not really in a position to make sound financial forecasts. This made its work appear somewhat unreal, particularly because it could not, and with good reason, absorb the crisis in Kosovo and its financial consequence and, finally, for reasons which do not strike us as being particularly satisfactory, because it refused to respond to the concerns expressed by Parliament on the issue of administrative reform. In our budgetary advice, we had asked for a progressive dismantling of the TAOs.
In our budgetary advice, we asked for a detailed evaluation of personnel requirements and of the capacity to act that the Commission thought it had with its current staffing level. We did not find you to be particularly enthusiastic on these two points.
We were disappointed Madam President, I shall not pretend otherwise, with the Council Budget. We found category 1 disappointing. We still do not understand why, for what purpose, with obligatory expenditure, you are enforcing massive reductions across the board. The argument given to us by certain representatives, according to which this is due to the changing monetary situation, seems to us, I must remind you, to be contrary or opposed to the very precise rules of our financial regulations.
Nor do we understand why, in category 2, you have reduced payment credits even though there might be several technical justifications for them.
In category 3, we can see clearly that although you may have performed a good job for the large programmes, which means all those which stopped at the co-decision stage, everything that concerns Parliament directly and specifically, on the other hand, you have sacrificed. You defend what is ours, you defend what belongs to both of us, but what belongs to us alone, you hold in contempt.
In category 4, you know the extent of the problem. You have tried to fit into this category a whole range of problems which do not fit: the “fishing” agreement on Morocco, and especially the enormous funds, estimated to stand at around 500 million for Kosovo, and that is without expanding the category any further. The result of this is that your proposal would be, as we say, robbing Peter to pay Paul – to sacrifice the priorities established by yesterday’s legislative and budgetary authorities for the sake of tomorrow’s priorities. We do not feel that this is a good policy.
In category 5, finally, we note a great reluctance to tackle the problem of pensions. We consider this to be a serious matter. We would also like to see a little more solidarity in supporting the much-needed changes to the Commission’s administrative structures. I think that, to sum up our complaint about your budget proposal, you seem to be simultaneously insulting the past, the present, and the future.
You are insulting the past, for the reasons I have just mentioned. As soon as you think that tomorrow’s priorities should be financed by sacrificing hitherto accepted priorities, you are acting unacceptably. We know, and you were quite right to remind us, that the Commission will have greater responsibilities in terms of foreign policy. It must fulfil these responsibilities."@en1
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