Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2007-12-11-Speech-2-232"
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"en.20071211.35.2-232"2
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"Mr President, at the heart of a policy without any ‘-isms’ is credibility. Credibility has a great deal to do with the purposes to which available tax revenue is put, and people can see this most clearly in the amounts spent on administrative bodies. Regrettably, this budget once again fails to indicate precisely how much is actually to be spent on administration. We have an item with EUR 6.6 billion there, but administrative expenditure is also hidden away inside many other appropriations.
Besides, whether the lifestyle of the political classes bears any relation to the living conditions of the vast majority of the population or not says something fundamental about the democratic nature of a society. We have a glaring example of a gulf between the two inside the European Union in the form of the pension scheme for officials as well as for those in this House who are in the luxury-class supplementary pension scheme. In the case of officials, the total volume of annual payments now stands at EUR 963 million, to which these officials themselves contribute no more than a third. The bill, moreover, just keeps rising. The number of pension recipients alone is set to increase by 5.5%. The inflation rate is automatically factored in. In this way Brussels is becoming increasingly remote from those it claims to represent, and that is bad for democracy.
This would be a starting point for rational budgetary reform, and it is also a call to action for you, Commissioner."@en1
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