Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2009-04-21-Speech-2-140"
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"en.20090421.19.2-140"2
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"Mr President, Mr Kallas, Mr Bösch, ladies and gentlemen, we are about to complete the most in-depth reform ever of the European Parliament. This reform includes the creation of statutes for both MEPs and assistants, an end to the unacceptable salary discrimination between MEPs, an end to the opaque system for paying our travel allowances and an end to the discriminatory pension system.
The Parliament to be elected in June will operate under much more transparent and fairer rules, and that is something that everyone here today has cause to celebrate.
As rapporteur for the discharge of Parliament’s accounts, as a member for 10 years of the Committee on Budgetary Control and as spokesman for the Socialist Group in the European Parliament, I am very proud of what we have achieved and I feel that it would not be asking too much for the public to register these changes, which they themselves have insistently demanded.
Having said this, I am today, as always, absolutely in favour of total transparency in the use of public funds. I fully agree with the opinions of the European Ombudsman in this respect. I am today, as always, opposed to using public funds to deal with the results of private risk-taking. I am today, as always, against voluntary pension funds that ignore salary differences, leading to unfair treatment.
I find it unacceptable when generalisations are made that are completely wrong, such as maintaining that all MEPs are entitled to two pensions.
As the author of this report, I should like to emphasise that, after 10 years as an MEP, and having spent shorter periods in the Portuguese parliament and the regional parliament of the Azores, I am now leaving parliamentary office without strictly being entitled to any pension, whether national, regional or European.
In this respect, I must say that those who believe that denying the rights of their representatives, which are the same throughout our societies, helps to improve Europe are absolutely mistaken.
On the contrary, I am convinced that the only way to overcome anyone’s lack of trust in their representatives is to minimise the laying down of specific rules for parliamentarians, seeing as they are responsible for the adoption of these rules. I even believe that the only issue on which Parliament should have decided was the relative position of MEPs in the European administration framework.
While regretting the lack of clarity that existed in the past between public duty and private interest in the pension system, I should appreciate some recognition of the work done by all those who, particularly on our Committee on Budgetary Control, have fought tirelessly for rigour and transparency in the European accounts.
Here in this House I want to pay a heartfelt tribute to everyone and express my wish that the work carried out by our committee to date should be continued in the next parliamentary term, with the same vigour and commitment that has been shown so far in order to bring about a stricter and fairer Europe that offers greater solidarity."@en1
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