Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-04-08-Speech-2-008"
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"en.20030408.1.2-008"2
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".
Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, I should first of all like to express my sincere thanks for the excellent cooperation I have received, not only from my fellow Members, but especially from the Secretary-General and his services. I can inform you that we received a reply to our questionnaire even before Christmas, and that the replies to those questions have helped to make it possible for us to fully incorporate it into the resolution. I believe that it is one of the first times that this has been possible at such an early stage, and I express my sincere thanks for that.
I have regarded my report as a kind of annual report on the functioning of the European Parliament in 2001. It starts with the most important news. It recommends to you all that the Secretary-General be given discharge for the work he did in 2001.
My report has 120 sections. It is quite impossible, therefore, to explain everything, and so I should like to clarify just a few aspects, starting with staff policy. I should like to go into more detail on equal opportunities policy: on women's access to senior posts in this Parliament. Parliament has declared itself in favour of this many times, but it remains a difficult area. As I say in my report, together with the Committee on Budgetary Control, this objective has not in fact been achieved. Only 22% of the officials in the top category are women. Three of the Directors-General recently recruited are men, and, in 2001, only 14.3% of women were promoted in category A as compared with 30.8% of men. I believe, therefore, that we have to support positive-discrimination measures. Where there is equal merit, systematic preference must be given to women when filling management posts until a balance is achieved.
Another difficult area is the appointment of senior officials. I recommend abandoning the accepted traditional practice of assembling geographically and politically balanced packages. I do not think that this is a good thing. We must go over to a policy of appointments based on the criteria of qualifications, merit and ability.
A second important chapter of my report concerns buildings policy. First of all, there is the fact that we have three places of work. In the previous discharge report, the Bureau and the Secretary-General were asked to publish a study on this. That study is now available, and it reveals that having three places of work costs EUR 169 million per year: EUR 120 million for the infrastructure, EUR 40 million for extra staff and missions and EUR 9 million for miscellaneous costs. The need for staff to travel to Strasbourg means that 25 855 days are lost. That costs the taxpayer almost EUR 4 million. Needless to say, this produces a particular image problem. Every time we receive groups of visitors, we have to explain it all over again. Not only does this give rise to an image problem, but also wastes time and money. This is beyond our control. Hence the recommendation to those MEPs who are active in the Convention to raise this there and ensure that the possibility of amending Article 289 of the EC Treaty is considered during the preparation of the draft Constitution. I know that this is still a significant problem, as a proposal of this kind still has to go to the Intergovernmental Conference, and indeed a number of Member States still have a veto. All the same, we owe it to ourselves to try.
Another aspect of buildings policy concerns the paved area that has been laid on top of Brussels-Luxembourg station. The Belgian Government has a number of obligations in this regard and should in fact bear the costs. The Belgian First Minister has been sent two letters, but has not replied. I therefore urge the Belgian Government to comply with its obligation forthwith and pay us that EUR 4.74 million.
I also devoted a few sections to the D4-D5 building. Mr President, you are the Vice-President responsible for buildings policy, and I say here in all frankness that I believe that you and the Administration have steered an excellent course. I think that you have done everything possible to execute this building project in accordance with the proper rules. I think, however and I say this in my report that a number of things have gone wrong, not on Parliament's side, but on the Belgian side. We were presented with a fait accompli against our will. The fact that the Belgian Government at one stage agreed that the land was free of charge, but that this nevertheless ended up in the hands of a private developer, has added to the difficulty of our task, and that is something I regret.
Finally, Mr President, I wish to say a few more words about environmental policy. This is an important element. I describe the many good measures you have taken with regard to the D4-D5 building. Significant efforts have been made to see to it that renewable energy will soon be utilised, that provision is made for solar panels and suchlike. I think that we should work towards a genuine climate policy plan for our institution, so that we, the European Parliament, can also make a contribution to meeting the Kyoto standards.
As recently as Friday of last week, the Commission presented a study stating that, if all the government buildings in the European Union used renewable energy, this would already mean 18% compliance with the Kyoto standard that Europe has to achieve. Let us set an example, let our Parliament take this step, too, and ensure a real climate policy plan for the European Parliament."@en1
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