Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2010-10-19-Speech-2-238"
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"en.20101019.20.2-238"2
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"Mr President, Mr Wathelet, Commissioner Lewandowski, ladies and gentlemen, we have just heard the rapporteur for the Commission’s budget talk about the major challenges that we face. I will now speak as rapporteur for the Parliament’s budget and for the other, mainly smaller, institutions.
The political conflict that we have to deal with – and this applies not only to Parliament’s budget, but equally to the Commission’s budget, too – is as follows: with the Treaty of Lisbon, Parliament has gained fields of competence in connection with energy policy and foreign policy and the power of codecision with regard to agriculture. We have more to say in respect of policy relating to sport and space. To put it plainly, our competences have increased, and that is a good thing. We have always fought for this as committed European parliamentarians. However, at the same time, we have a situation in the Member States that has forced them into austerity measures and debt reduction policies, and therefore between these two major goals – on the one hand, we have new tasks and, on the other, we must show that we understand the pressure that the public budgets are under – we have to find a political line. That is exactly what I have tried to do as rapporteur for Parliament’s budget, namely, to find a genuinely fair balance between the new competences, and thus our new work requirements and requirements for additional staff, and the need to send out a signal to the citizens of the European Union and to the governments that we also want to practice self-restraint and self-discipline.
The Bureau has put forward proposals, as that is its job, with regard to what costs should be increased in Parliament’s budget in order for it to be possible to work properly. We have now taken the decisions in the Committee on Budgets concerning appropriations, which, at an amount in the region of EUR 25 million, is below that originally proposed by the Bureau. That means that we intend to limit our travel costs, the amount allocated for studies, the funds for security here in this House and for information technology, and we will make fewer posts available for the library services. We have a conflict and that relates to the question of how much money there should be in the near future for MEPs’ assistants. The proposal is that, for 2011, this money should be increased once again by EUR 1 500. I would like to say quite clearly that as a member of the Group of the Greens/European Free Alliance, I do not support this proposal. I think it is excessive at this point in time. In the Committee on Budgets, the majority agreed that we need more information and that this money will initially be held in reserve, in other words, not released, but that more policy decisions will need to be taken with regard to whether we now want to release this money or whether we consider it to be a wiser policy not to make this money available for 2011.
Moreover, it is very important to me – because, of course, we have a considerable interest in making our European institutions environmentally friendly and, as far as possible, changing our own behaviour – that we have called for a new, more environmentally friendly approach to mobility. For example, there is to be a ticket for local public transport in Brussels, and that is to be negotiated further. It would be extremely good if we could significantly limit our driver services, but this also means that here in this House in Strasbourg, we should make more bicycles available for the MEPs and staff, so that we can get around in an environmentally friendly manner here in Strasbourg as well.
A second point that is extremely important to me is the fact that we have tried to find a good balance with a majority in the Committee on Budgets. We did not only consider our own interests as representatives of Parliament and increase our budget responsibly, but, of course, we also had to look at the other small institutions: the Committee of the Regions, the Economic and Social Committee, the Court of Auditors, the European Data Protection Supervisor as well as the European Ombudsman. What we have done in this regard is to take a responsible position so that we have not only made more staff and resources available to ourselves, but that we have also, in a very targeted way, granted the Committee of the Regions and the Economic and Social Committee a certain increase in funds, albeit not everything they asked for, because, of course, they too have greater labour requirements on account of additional competences resulting from the Treaty of Lisbon. Particularly in the case of a small institution like the European Data Protection Supervisor, which is very important in connection with many of the debates that we are conducting at the moment on how to deal with data protection in the digital world – and this important institution is still in the process of being established – it is right to accommodate it to the extent of granting it two new positions. In this regard, ladies and gentlemen, we would make it clear that the Committee on Budgets tried to take a very responsible line between well-founded increases which we support, and which we also have to justify to the Council because we want to do a good job here, and an understanding of the fact that a certain degree of self-restraint is definitely called for at the present time."@en1
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