Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-10-12-Speech-4-013"
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"en.20061012.3.4-013"2
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".
Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, further to what Mrs Haug has said, perhaps I might, on behalf of the Group of the European People's Party (Christian Democrats) and European Democrats, make a number of fundamental observations relating to the agencies.
This House has spent years fighting against bureaucracy, duplication of structures and excessive bureaucracy, and, although it has always been right to do so, its efforts have met with only partial success. At the same time, though, the creation of new agencies is repeatedly endorsed, not only by this House, but also, and predominantly, by the Council. Demands are also made for new monitoring bodies and machinery, with consequences that are obvious when we take a look at the Court of Auditors’ report.
We now have sixteen agencies. I do not know whether you are familiar with all of them and know where they are to be found, but they now employ over 2 300 people, and, if you tot up the costs, you will see that these are probably now about to go over the billion mark. We are talking about EUR 1 000 million here, and when you see 60% or 70% of that going on the administration of these agencies alone, you will quite rightly ask yourself how much sense it makes to have these agencies, and you will be all the more likely to ask questions when you become aware that some of the work is done either in the Commission, the European Council, or, indeed, in Parliament and that these three institutions could well make a better and more efficient job of it. That is the problem that we face.
We know that there are, inevitably, administrative costs associated with the agencies, and that these are increasing dramatically; I have myself taken a look at the figures, which show an annual increase between 10% and 20% in personnel costs, which, in some agencies, runs to between 80% and 100%, but the question arises of who checks to see what services these agencies actually perform, in what way they benefit the public in the European Union, or what value they add. It may well be that some of them – perhaps even many of them – are superfluous. We should be so bold as to look to see how the various functions can be better shared around and in which instances others could do the jobs better.
What I am calling for is a pause for reflection and a review of the existing 16 agencies in terms of their performance and added value; I am also asking that consideration be given to closing down any agencies that have become surplus to requirements and no longer do anything useful, rather than constantly speculating about where we can open new ones."@en1
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