Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-02-18-Speech-1-081"
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"en.20080218.21.1-081"2
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"Mr President, our European Parliament has always wished to implement a policy of transparency with regard to our funds, the EU’s funds. Such was the case when, perhaps through mismanagement, problems arose that forced the Commission headed by Mr Santer to resign.
Since then it must be said that things have improved considerably; this Parliament has propelled a policy of transparency, and the Commission has supported the Parliament. The result of this interest on the part of the Barroso Commission is the creation of nothing less than a Vice-Presidency to achieve this objective, represented here by Vice-President Siim Kallas, whom I welcome.
European citizens must know what we do with the very small amount of money they pay to the EU, what we do with that scant 1%; we must have more control over Community funds through visibility. Visibility is no longer just a notice hung up in a town hall or on a building site financed with regional funds or the Cohesion Fund; we have to go much further, and it must be possible to determine the whereabouts of that small amount of money provided by European taxpayers through Member States.
That is the Transparency Initiative, which this Parliament supports wholeheartedly. This own-initiative report we are submitting says two things. The first is that a little more must be done. In the text we have chosen to say that transparency must be manifested by the publication of black lists and information as to which tenderers have been accepted and which have been excluded, and OLAF must have a code to guarantee the presumption of innocence, which has not been the case on many occasions. In other words, within the EU, the European Parliament already has its own code of ethics. We are not officials, we are politicians; we must be transparent too, and we already are.
Thus in Amendment 2 to paragraph 22, I request that the list proposed by the Transparency Initiative be removed, in the main not only because this Parliament has already taken decisions on our financial interests, missions and travel, but because we also feel there must be rules for the entire European Union. This Parliament has its own rules, but they will have to improve and perhaps go even further.
There is another amendment where I remove the reference to MEPs as holding public posts; we do not hold public posts, we are politicians. This confusion could lead to problems in some national legislation.
Through this idea of increasing transparency, which we support, we also wish to draw attention to the fact that Member States share the management of 80% of the funds, and so we again call for Member States to submit National Declarations of Assurance. This is urgent and necessary, and we insist it must be done. We are saying that the initiative presented by Commissioner Kallas must include the recovery of Community funds. This cannot be excluded: when our money is misused, we must know where it is, how it is to be recovered, and when it is to be recovered.
We have made many improvements in terms of transparency, Commissioner, but this Parliament will strive to make many more."@en1
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