Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2009-05-04-Speech-1-156"
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".
In my meetings with European Parliament secretary-general Klaus Welle I noted from the outset the efforts he made to resolve problems. I applaud his attempt to optimise the work of the European Parliament’s administration, which is an institution employing 6 000 people. I noted a similar commitment and positive approach in negotiations with representatives of the European Parliament’s various directorates-general.
In some areas savings have already been identified and improvements proposed. One example of this would be the action plan of the Directorate-General for the Presidency relating to security services, which can bring savings in Brussels, Strasbourg and Luxembourg amounting to EUR 2.6 million a year with no negative impact on security and protection.
Most expenditure items and main projects in the European Parliament budget are of a multiannual nature. I firmly believe that if we improve medium-term budget planning and increase its transparency we will achieve efficiencies. Ladies and gentlemen, the report I am presenting today, which has been approved by the Committee on Budgets, clearly shows that we would like to leave more room for manoeuvre for the new Parliament. If the Committee on Budgets identified savings or reduced certain items we did not begin working on them at this stage just in order to appear tough or to launch a round of in-fighting with the administration and the Presidency on one side and the Committee on Budgets on the other. Our common aim is to obtain a professional and comprehensive summary of the issue and based on this to take the right decision. In the area of workforce planning the Committee on Budgets is bearing in mind proposals and changes to the structure of services and the workforce plan submitted by the Presidency. When we have a summary of all the requirements arising from the studies, the Committee will be ready to consider the whole package of requirements carefully.
Last week I met Swedish Finance Ministry secretary of state Hans Lindblad, who will represent the Swedish Presidency of the EU in the area of finance, together with other officials from the Swedish permanent representation in Brussels and the Swedish Finance Ministry. I was promised close cooperation on rationalising European institution budgets. The Swedish Presidency representatives placed special emphasis on building policy, which is also one of our priorities. Expenditure on purchasing and renting buildings is one of the main administrative cost items of EU institutions. Just over three years ago the institutions were using total space in excess of 2 million square metres. We therefore decided that we needed a joint policy in the area of buildings, better inter-institutional cooperation, better coordination of planning, a review into consolidating office space in certain areas and better use of public tenders. I would therefore like to applaud the secretary-general’s promise that in the new election period he will submit a medium-term building strategy plan proposal very quickly, so that it will be available to MEPs ahead of the first reading in the autumn in order for them to approve budget decisions.
We can achieve annual savings of millions of euros by improving cooperation between European institutions. I believe that cooperation with the Inter-Institutional Working Group on multilingualism will enable us to make better use of free capacity in this area. Next year we should have available the study into the Euramis translation tool, the full and automatic use of which will probably bring about a revolution in the area of translations and in cooperation in the area of translations. I firmly believe that this tool will bring greater efficiency and financial savings in this area in the next two years, reducing dependency on external services."@en1
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