Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2012-02-15-Speech-3-517-000"
| Predicate | Value (sorted: default) |
|---|---|
| rdf:type | |
| dcterms:Date | |
| dcterms:Is Part Of | |
| dcterms:Language | |
| lpv:document identification number |
"en.20120215.24.3-517-000"2
|
| lpv:hasSubsequent | |
| lpv:speaker | |
| lpv:spoken text |
"Mr President, national governments throughout Europe are striving to cut expenditure, deliver better value for money and keep budgets under tight control, and that is our job too. As Members of this House, we should be doing the same. We ought to be closely scrutinising the institutions’ budgets; we should be enforcing rigorous cost control, and we have here the real chance to show leadership.
I would like to give credit to the Secretary-General and Parliament’s Bureau for the very realistic figures and proposals which they brought forward today. But I would also say that we now have the right, as Members of this House, to demand that the other European institutions follow that example. We should be demanding real savings in their budgets and they should be able to demonstrate value for money.
I fully support the rapporteur’s call for a freeze on their budgets; indeed, as he will know, there are many areas where I would wish to go further. But for now, I congratulate Mr Vaughan on a very good report.
However, there are three points that I want to make. The first concerns building policy. The members of this House ought to be looking more critically at building investment, building management and building cost control, and, in particular, we should expect the other institutions to be achieving greater efficiencies through sharing resources.
Secondly, administration and staffing costs. This Parliament should be looking to the institutions to deliver a progressive reduction in costs through exploiting economies of scale. It is now time we looked again at staff levels, staff regulations and staff pensions policies to ensure that they are both up to date, relevant and represent value for money to the European taxpayer.
Finally, it is not possible to have this debate without discussing the two-seat arrangement of this Parliament. May I remind this House that, in approving the report by the Special Committee on the policy challenges and budgetary resources for a sustainable European Union after 2013 (SURE), we called for the parliamentary seat to be kept under review. It is indefensible that this House goes on promoting cost-saving, efficiency and competitiveness amongst the other institutions, amongst national governments, and indeed amongst the people of Europe, while we continue such a wasteful practice ourselves.
I would therefore like to recommend to the rapporteur and to this House that, for the sake of the credibility of this institution, we need to have that debate and we ought to have it now."@en1
|
| lpv:spokenAs | |
| lpv:unclassifiedMetadata | |
| lpv:videoURI |
Named graphs describing this resource:
The resource appears as object in 2 triples