Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2002-02-27-Speech-3-158"
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"en.20020227.11.3-158"2
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"Mr President, I shall be discussing both documents together, not only that on Parliament’s budget but also that on the Convention, a report which I drafted together with Mr Costa Neves, for both reports are closely connected.
The Convention on the European Union’s future commences tomorrow. We are therefore in good time to commit the funding for this. The Convention offers a good opportunity to obtain a more decisive institution, to bring about more efficiency in this House and also to increase the legitimacy of the institutions.
The concept of such a meeting of representatives of Parliament and governments was born here in this House. The European Parliament sets great store by the success of this Convention. This is one of the reasons why we agreed to an accelerated procedure. I therefore hope that Parliament makes it possible for the supplementary and amending budget No 1/2002 to be approved tomorrow, to coincide with the start of the Convention.
I should like to single out a few details of the Convention’s budget. The Council’s Secretariat-General has made an estimate and arrived at an amount of approximately EUR 10.5 million for a 10-month period, until December 2002. Part of this amount, EUR 6.5 million, will be payable by the participants: the three institutions – Parliament, the Commission and the Council – and the governments and parliaments of the Member States or the candidate countries. This, for example, covers all kinds of travel expenses which are usually borne by the institutions or the national governments. This leaves us with a balance of some EUR 4 million. This is the amount which actually matters for this is the Convention’s own budget.
How will this EUR 4 million be managed? It is only a small amount, of course, but, politically speaking, it is very important for the three institutions to have a sufficient say in the budget. On a limited, practical level, it goes without saying that the Convention and its Praesidium will decide on how this budget will be spent. But if expense funds are moved elsewhere, for example if more funding is needed for daily expenses, to the detriment of the forum for NGOs and citizens, then that is a political matter. Then it is important, particularly for a Parliament which wants to play an important role in the Convention, to have a say in the budget.
The problem, however, is that the Convention itself has no legal basis and that the normal budgetary principles did not, therefore, apply. The Member States insisted that Parliament and the Council should not form the two arms of the budgetary authority, but that the EU Member States as a whole should have the final word.
Although this was inopportune for us, we showed an understanding of this problem in the negotiations and arranged matters in such a way that the Member States were eventually able to give their seal of approval, though not before the three institutions had given their
. Accordingly, the Member States can only approve something if the three institutions agree. As a result, the European Parliament has acquired the right of veto, we have a say in the budget, we also have the right to information and to peruse documentation, we can give discharge and such like, and we have therefore, in practice, held on to the important achievements of Parliament.
I am very aware that this solution is not very attractive on the surface. We would, of course, have preferred it if the amount had been included in the budget in the normal way, but this is how it was, for there was no legal basis. Seen against this backdrop, I therefore think that the Committee on Budgets has achieved a very respectable result.
Despite this, there has been some criticism. I was at the Bureau today and, there too, concern was expressed about the role of Parliament and about the implications of Parliament not answering to the Council but to the Member States as a whole. There was also concern in the Committee on Budgetary Control, the Committee on Budgets and the Committee on Constitutional Affairs. This is the reason why we have included a long amendment in the resolution which expressly states the achievements of the agreement and which also states that this agreement
has no legal character. It forms an exception, an agreement that only applies to this particular situation. I hope that this addition, in which we expressly state that the agreement is an exception, as well as the fact that we managed to retain Parliament’s say in the budget after all, will lead to wide support for this agreement."@en1
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