Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-03-29-Speech-3-153"
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"en.20000329.9.3-153"2
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"Mr President, as we speak, a conference is being held elsewhere in Brussels on the reconstruction of the Balkans. Rapporteur Haug, whom I too would like to thank for the agreeable cooperation there has been between us, states that the Commission must not enter into financial commitments, or arouse expectations without first consulting the budgetary authority. I am all in favour of this. Consultation is a good thing and it is important to know which way the wind is blowing. But this must not prejudice the European Commission’s right of initiative. It is only right that the Commission, of all the institutions, should serve the interests of Europe, although it has to be said that during the negotiations for Budget 2000 we saw all too often how one half of the budgetary authority was mainly preoccupied with the national coffers.
In fact the question of self-interest brings me automatically onto paragraph 22. I know that rapporteur Haug will shed no tears if we remove this paragraph from the text. Nor will my group. But it is a different story with the Council. At least I assume that the Council applauds the fact that we make the point in the text that special budgetary needs should be spread equally over all budgetary categories. After all, this will lead to cuts in the programmes in Categories 2 and 3, which are chock-a-block, whilst the lion’s share of the money left in Category 1 will be able to find its way back into the national coffers at the end of the year, on account of fluctuating prices or the anticipated changes to the sugar regime, among other factors. I hope that we will be able to re-think this commitment appropriation and agree amongst ourselves to first await the Commission’s proposals.
Finally, a word about our amendment to Mr Ferber’s report. The institutions are being asked to discontinue discrimination on the basis of the nature of officials’ long-term relationships. Some of my fellow delegates thought this was going into too much detail for the guidelines. I would like to point out that what we do concern ourselves with in this text is officials who have a duty of maintenance, and allowances for dependent children. In all probability, a guideline will be adopted in the course of this year which will ban discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation within the labour market. I hope you will seize the opportunity to lead the way in the fight for equal treatment."@en1
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