Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-10-24-Speech-2-199"

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"Mr President, I would like to thank Mr Grech, the rapporteur for Parliament’s budget. It was a pleasure to work with him and to reach joint compromises in my role as shadow rapporteur. I congratulate him on the excellent end result that we achieved. Above all, we have to remember the principles upon which the budget is drawn up. Firstly, we have to be precise about how we intend to spend taxpayers’ money. Another principle is that we spend money on what is necessary. We should not be doing all sorts of nice and interesting things, but what is really necessary. The 20% increase principle is hopelessly outdated. It sometimes leads to madness, such as the proposal for Internet television. The idea behind Internet television is for Parliament to have its own TV channel. The money for that cannot really be justified to taxpayers. As an example, I might mention the speech given in Brussels by Finland’s second Minister of Finance at the beginning of the Finnish presidential term. The speech was broadcast via Internet TV to everyone in Europe, but in the whole of Europe there were just 14 interested viewers, half of whom were the Minister’s own advisers. If we are to make an investment of tens of millions for just a handful of people, the money is certainly going to be in the wrong place. It would be more cost-effective to spend the money, for example, on bringing journalists from small local and regional newspapers here, after which they would write articles on Parliament and what happens here. People read these sorts of newspapers carefully, but they will not really follow these Internet TV broadcasts. We need all budget headings to be closely evaluated and monitored, and this applies especially to building policy. I am happy that we have found a common view, because the building in Strasbourg became a scandal, and we no longer need publicity like that. We therefore need to be a lot more careful about how we spend money."@en1

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