Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-12-13-Speech-3-493"
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"en.20061213.43.3-493"2
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".
Mr President, we are therefore looking at these two amendments. What are the reasons for the change in the number of Quaestors? When Parliament had 500 Members, we had five Quaestors, in other words, virtually one for every 100 MEPs. If we stuck with that ratio with the proposed 780 Members, we would have a very high number. If, as the Committee has suggested, we increase the number of Quaestors to six, that would be one Quaestor for every 130 Members of the House, still a larger number than was for many years the case.
I believe that the complexity of developments and of the problems that will arise in the House with 25 languages – I am now including Catalan and Irish, for example – that this complexity affecting the conduct of business and decisions justifies increasing that number from five to six for a time.
The same applies to the increase in the number of committee vice-chairmen. It is an indisputable fact that, so far as anyone can judge, we will now from January 2007 to the middle of 2009 have the largest number of Members this Parliament is ever planned to have. This unusually large number of MEPs suggests that, or is the reason why, a larger number of elected representatives will be appointed to the committees for the same period.
It is of course not only to do with the conduct of business but also with the fact that people are already in these posts and the new Bulgarian and Romanian Members are now coming, who are of course also entitled to such positions. We would have to take them away from existing Members and give them to new ones. From a formal, legal point of view that is of course possible, but it would not be conducive to, let us say, committed internal parliamentary work. There would be frustrations and disappointments, which can be avoided by taking this approach.
I grant that one thing has perhaps not gone as well as it might. We could and perhaps should have recognised this six months earlier. That would have made it easier to talk these things through quietly with all the parliamentary groups. The fact that this idea unfortunately occurred to those responsible only very late in the day made it look as though a sitting had to be held on Monday and a vote taken on it on Thursday. I ask for your forbearance. It can happen in political life that you hit upon a good idea later than events really require. I ask for your understanding for that and readily admit that many honourable Members found this fact rather hard to understand. There was no ill intent behind it, no funny business; only when the new situation became clear did we suddenly find there was a new problem we had not seen before.
To sum up, I believe this compromise of creating an extra post in two areas for a limited period while making clear that we will return to normal at the end of that period is a reasonable proposal that will be good for the conduct of parliamentary business and I ask for your agreement and understanding."@en1
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