Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2004-02-25-Speech-3-113"
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"en.20040225.8.3-113"2
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"Mr President, Commissioner, I would like to congratulate the rapporteur, Mr Kuckelkorn, who is known for his rigour, as those of us who have worked with him in the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs and the Committee on Budgets are well aware, particularly when negotiating the issue of European Agencies over a long period of time.
At the moment the usual advocates of budgetary rigour and saving are more necessary and more realistic than ever, because now there is a reduction in the ceiling for heading 5 and I would find it difficult to name any rapporteur who was more notorious than Mr Kuckelkorn for their rigour to carry out these cuts.
Furthermore, I am genuinely curious to see the report of the General Secretaries of the institutions on the estimates of the administrative needs for 2005. I believe it is going to be a very fortunate and beneficial year for everybody since the Secretaries of the various institutions are going to have to reconcile enlargement and its administrative requirements with the restriction we are going to be faced with next year of the reduction of EUR 140 million in heading 5. By the way, this rigour which is being asked of the other institutions must also be applied to the Commission and to the European Parliament itself.
Our group, Mr Kuckelkorn, believes it is perfectly possible to remain next year within the 20% limit for the European Parliament’s budget, particularly after the Council, as a result of the opposition, above all, of the German Government, has blocked the reform of the Members’ Statute.
Our group has presented and defended amendments in the Committee on Budgets in particular on the issue of multilingualism and its implementation. We tried this in the 2004 budget and we would be very happy to find now that we have an interlocutor open to dialogue on the possible initiatives our group is presenting. At the moment the report, voted on in the Committee on Budgets, supports it.
We entirely agree with the rest of the measures in Mr Kuckelkorn’s report and we are finally left with the issue of the funding of the political parties. My group would have liked – and we were one vote away from achieving it in the Committee on Budgets – that committee to express its support for including this funding of European political parties within Parliament’s limit of 20%. What we did not want with this amendment we are presenting was to have to negotiate the funding of the political parties year after year, which would be the case if we were funding outside the limit of 20%. Funding them within the 20% limit would prevent this situation and would ensure a quick negotiation by means of a transfer. We should remember that the code of conduct necessary for this transfer to political parties is due to be finalised very soon.
Nevertheless, because of the opposition of other political groups, and particularly yours, Mr Kuckelkorn, this has not been possible and therefore the compromise solution proposed in the amendment of the Greens/ALE Group seems to us to be acceptable as the only way to avoid jeopardising this transfer, which must be carried out in 2004, in this budgetary year. Furthermore, with this compromise, with this amendment from the Greens, we would prevent the budgetary restriction of heading 5 from jeopardising the functioning of the political parties during next September, as they themselves warn, which may be faced with serious operating problems of an administrative nature if this transfer does not take place.
I am pleased that Mr Kuckelkorn is prepared to take this compromise into account – to vote for this amendment – and, if this is the case, Mr President, I believe that the rest of the vote on the report by Mr Kuckelkorn will be practically unanimous because, on the rest of the major issues, we fully share his thinking."@en1
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