Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-06-15-Speech-4-124"
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"en.20000615.4.4-124"2
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".
Mr President, Commissioner, the Committee on Regional Policy, Transport and Tourism has examined the Commission’s 10th annual report on the Structural Funds regarding the implementation of operations during 1998.
Mr President, lastly, I would like to explain my position regarding the seven amendments which will be put to the vote on Friday. I, myself, have tabled a technical amendment, the third amendment, which corrects a transcription error likely to cause confusion and make paragraph 28 inconsistent with the rest of the report. I also accept Amendment No 1 and Amendment No 2, since they are in line with the report. However, I cannot accept Amendment No 4, Amendment No 5, Amendment No 6 or Amendment No 7, for I consider that they misrepresent the rest of the report.
In any case, I would like to thank Mr Nogueira and Mr Larrea, the authors of these last amendments, and publicly acknowledge that, although I do not support their approach, I do concede that their argument is valid and well structured.
As you are aware, the sound and efficient implementation of the Structural Funds is of fundamental importance for the credibility and effectiveness of the Community institutions, in particular the European Parliament, considering its monitoring functions.
Our report, which was adopted unanimously, takes note of the fact that all the resources available for 1998 were fully taken up but it also records that there are still considerable divergences in implementation between Objectives, between the Member States and between regions, and that this full take-up was only made possible by mechanisms for offsetting over- and under-implementation, which, in fact, made the implementation of the budget non-transparent. We therefore hope that the new rules for the next programming period will make it possible to ensure transparent financial management and avoid the usual yearly liquidity bottlenecks;
With regard to coordination, it urges the Commission and the Member States to coordinate Structural Fund policy more closely with the Cohesion Fund, the other regional development instruments and the various European Union financial instruments such as trans-European networks and the EDSP. This is because we are convinced that we can only reduce the structural divergences between European regions and areas through coordinated action.
As regards additionality, which is one of fundamental principles underlying the Structural Funds, we call upon the Commission to find as soon as possible instruments to improve verification of compliance with additionality and more transparent procedures for assessing additionality. We strongly urge the Member States to ensure that this principle is strictly upheld.
We consider it essential, moreover, in respecting the partnership principle, for management decentralisation to be accompanied by a clarification of the responsibilities and roles of the various partners and by a clear distinction between the functions and responsibilities. Furthermore, we have noted that the results of the interim evaluations are frequently not comparable or quantifiable because unsuitable and inadequate indicators have been employed, which is why it is absolutely necessary for us to have objective criteria and more suitable assessment methods for assessing the results of the programmes.
We have also noted that, although there was an inexplicable and dangerous fall in the number of on-the-spot checks carried out under the regulation in 1998 compared to the previous year, they have brought to light a whole range of shortcomings, from an insufficient number of monitoring schemes in certain programmes to the co-financing of non-admissible expenditure. As a result, we consider that the Commission’s checks in 1998 were, unfortunately, still unsatisfactory, and that they must be sufficiently strengthened in order to guarantee proper implementation of the Structural Funds regulations.
In our report, we therefore call upon the European Commission and the Member States to adopt a number of actions as soon as possible to strengthen controls and to keep Parliament better informed of measures adopted to increase transparency and improve the implementation of the Structural Funds. Since this 10th annual report was especially concerned with measures to promote local development, we have noted their strategic importance and emphasise their considerable contribution to local development.
Finally, Commissioner, I would like to stress that our report is consistent with the opinion you expressed on 5 June last in Brussels, when you stressed that, in the interests of transparency, even the smallest European taxpayer has to know where and how Community resources appropriated
to the Structural Funds are spent. I will leave to you the task of assessing whether a Commission report such as the 1998 report allows, I will not say the smallest, but any of the European taxpayers to satisfy their desire."@en1
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