Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-10-26-Speech-3-038"
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"en.20051026.2.3-038"2
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"Mr President, Commissioner, like all of my fellow Members, I shall begin by paying tribute to the rapporteur, Mr Pittella, who had a tough job to do with regard to the Commission. Mr Dombrovskis’ task was perhaps even more complicated, for he had a tough job to do within Parliament itself, there always being a difficult trial of strength between the Committee on Budgets and the Bureau, and I believe that he has thoroughly fulfilled this task, even if it was sometimes difficult to do so.
Since my colleague, Mrs Trüpel, has focused her speech on the general budget, I should like to focus mine on Parliament’s budget so as to put down a marker because, in my opinion, we are preparing to vote in favour of a rather absurd provision.
For the first time in its history, Parliament is abandoning the theoretical threshold of 20% administrative expenditure. I am not abnormally attached to this figure but, nonetheless, I am going to make two or three remarks. Firstly, I do not wish to let it be said in this Chamber that, at the end of the year, the Bureau might urgently contrive an injection of the capital that we were unable to use. That is not the case. What we are really talking about is a long term policy, in accordance with which our Parliament wanted systematically to inject capital in order to buy property. Doing so has enabled taxpayers to make a saving of hundreds – and I mean hundreds – of millions of euros, because we bought our buildings at just the right time, instead of paying absolutely absurd rates of interest.
In its resolution, our Parliament says that we are giving up EUR 20 million. On the other hand, it is also saying that it is ready to lay claim once again to this money from the Council if the money is required for buying property. I am going to leave this Chamber in exactly four minutes to go and negotiate the sale of some new buildings for Parliament. It is therefore already clear that we are going to need that money.
Consequently, I can picture the Council laughing when it sees our request for an amended budget arrive, in which we lay claim to what we are rather hastily giving back to the Council today in order to make an outward gesture. Making an outward gesture is a very nice idea but, in truth, this EUR 20 million would enable us to inject capital and to make substantial savings. EUR 20 million divided up among Europe’s citizens – I calculated how much that came to – is a good four cents that we are giving back to every citizen. I believe that each citizen would be very pleased to receive these four cents. However, we could have used those EUR 20 million to carry out another policy. EUR 20 million is either too much or too little. As it happens, this is a particularly exceptional example of a situation not making sense."@en1
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