Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2007-09-04-Speech-2-166"
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"en.20070904.21.2-166"2
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"Mr President, ladies and gentleman, what we are discussing today is the second year’s implementation of the agreed Financial Perspective; we are discussing implementation of multiannual programmes with European added value as determined in codecision; and we are discussing additional commitments to reform by all three institutions. I should like to assure the Council Presidency that a promising start was made, in terms of basic agreements, with the tripartite dialogue and the conciliation procedure on 13 July. The five statements to which you referred, particularly concerning how we deal with the decentralised agencies, are a move in the right direction and one on which I hope we can build.
I have one brief comment on Heading 3: in relation to natural disasters, what has happened to former Commissioner Michel Barnier’s proposals on civil defence in Europe? Do we have a joint response and, if so, how might it impact on the 2008 and subsequent budgets?
Mr President, the foreign and security policy issues, to which we have referred repeatedly, confirm that our political analyses were correct: the current figures in the draft budget are insufficient to address the challenges in Afghanistan, Palestine or Kosovo, and cutting the Emergency Aid Reserve is merely a virtual solution, the point of which we cannot grasp. In this regard, we would ask the Commission to state clearly what, from its perspective, lies in store for us in the coming years.
I have one final point, Mr President. The Member States undertook – and I quote here – referring to the Statement of Assurance mentioned in paragraph 44 of the Interinstitutional Agreement: ‘to produce an annual summary at the appropriate level of the available audits and declarations’.
‘to produce an annual summary at the appropriate level of the available audits and declarations’.
I say this very much in earnest: those Member States not in a position to guarantee that the annual report will arrive in good time may expect us to take issue with them on this matter on budgetary as well as other grounds. Otherwise, I fully support what our two rapporteurs have said.
I should also like to tell you, Commissioner, that your initiative for a two-stage presentation on implementation of the budget is another important step in the interests of efficient budgetary policy on the part of both the Commission and the European Parliament.
Obviously, what we have to do now, in this budgetary procedure on the basis of the Council’s draft, is to ensure budget discipline and to safeguard commitments already entered into, but of course we also have to adjust the foreseeable and anticipated figures. In that regard, I do not understand what the Council has said in its additional statement in relation to the sub-headings on growth and employment (1a) and on agricultural policy and market-related expenditure – namely that if the amounts are insufficient, the Commission must be asked to submit an amending budget. Heading 4, foreign policy, has to be highlighted yet again as chronically under-financed. I must point out, too, that in the negotiations on the Financial Perspective we flagged up these shortfalls right from the outset.
So we shall work to ensure that agreed programmes are properly implemented in terms of both commitments and payments. At the same time – and let me make this quite clear — we shall not accept any shelving of our political priorities either in the current budgetary procedure, Commissioner, or indeed through major global transfers at the end of a budget year.
I want to say explicitly that the statement on implementation of the Structural Funds and rural development was important for us, and we would ask the Commission to submit a progress report as soon as possible because the Member States and the regions quite rightly expect to see the programmes in question here implemented without delay.
Taken overall, the statements concerning the decentralised agencies, advocating improved cost-benefit analysis, make for greater transparency and greater clarity about the staff actually employed there – whether permanently or temporarily — and they constitute a qualitative step forward which, in conjunction with the Commission’s so-called ‘screening report’ on establishment plans, amounts to positive progress and must be further developed, studied and more thoroughly pursued. The watchword in this regard, I would add, should be prudence as opposed to over-reaction.
Of course, much of what we currently complain about in relation to decentralisation or the rules for implementing the Financial Regulation results from Community decisions, for which we all bear our share of responsibility. The solution is a familiar one and it entails slimming down procedures and simplifying them to some extent. In that regard, there remains a great deal of work to be done.
Allow me to say something here on two or three key points. The figure for payments in the Commission’s preliminary draft was EUR 8.2 billion less than the ceiling in the Financial Perspective. Now the Council has submitted a draft with a figure EUR 10.3 billion below the ceiling. If you look at the Council’s summary table, however, you will find that the content is highly questionable. Under the heading for the Lisbon Strategy, growth and employment, for example, the fact of creating a new EUR 342 million margin, and reducing the payments by EUR 548 million from the figure in the preliminary draft, effectively amounts to making an artificial margin to accommodate the European Council’s pronouncements on political priorities.
I assume that the underlying issues are the problem of financing the European Institute of Technology and the problem of financing the Galileo project. Let me be very clear here: Parliament firmly favours a Community solution for the Galileo project and, in the overall context, awaits new proposals from the Commission."@en1
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