Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2002-11-21-Speech-4-014"
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"en.20021121.1.4-014"2
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"Madam President, Mr Maystadt, this is the third time that Parliament has been able to give its opinion on the EIB's annual report. The report by Mrs van de Burg is balanced and consistent, and the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs has therefore adopted it unanimously. I would nevertheless like to make some observations.
First of all, I should like to comment on the role of the Bank. The role of the EIB is important. The Bank is a major investor on the European market and outside, with considerable macro-economic clout. This macro-economic clout does not require the EIB to have its own macro-economic policy. The agreement is that the Bank serves the EU's goals. The Bank deploys its investment funds in order to strengthen the EU's macro-economic policy. In other words, the Bank's mission does not require it to adopt a pro-active role. The EIB is to promote economic and social cohesion within the EU by financially supporting the goals which the European Union has in mind. As a result, the EIB naturally has macro-economic influence, and, indeed a great deal of it, but this influence is not a goal in itself.
I should now like to turn to the plan by the Group of the Party of European Socialists to include in the structure of the EIB a body to define the scope for employment and the effects on employment of EIB projects. Creating employment is not one of the Bank's tasks as such, but it is sometimes, of course, a side-effect. The Bank's task to modernise means the effect could also be the complete opposite, intensifying the eternal dilemma between productivity increase through high-grade investments and employment. Given this dilemma, there is no point in setting up an extensive employment barometer. In my view, employment is not a goal in itself as far as the Bank is concerned. In order to avoid unnecessary administrative costs, we have agreed to the simple registration of employment effects – or employment impact assessment, to use a fine phrase – but without any snags. In other words, employment impact assessment should not take on the scale of the Bank's environmental section. Sustainable environmental policy is one of the Bank's explicit tasks. We are thus opposed to a comparison of the employment barometer with the environmental section. We will try to prevent the comparison between the two, suggested by the word 'similar' in the amendment, by a split vote. We believe that the EIB funds should be used for investments and not for the system itself if this can at all be helped.
Finally, there is the question of monitoring. At present, the Bank's outgoings are covered by the EU Member States. It also generates money itself by issuing bonds. In our view, the issuing of bonds to pension institutions, as proposed by the rapporteur, is unwise for the time being because there is as yet insufficient transparency within the Bank.
We hope that the amendments we have tabled will prevent the link being made to pensions in the final report. We expect of the Commission that, after three years of debating the issue of monitoring, it will finally produce proposals on how better monitoring can be arranged and what the Court of Auditors' exact role might be. I believe in the Dutch saying: ‘vertrouwen is goed, maar controle is beter’ – trust is good, but control is better."@en1
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