Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2012-05-10-Speech-4-016-000"
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"en.20120510.9.4-016-000"2
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"Madam President, I am standing in, today, for Ms Ayala Sender, who is in Algeria as part of an electoral observers’ delegation and is thus unable to act as rapporteur for discharge of the other institutions.
Let me start with the good news: we intend to move that the majority of the other institutions should be discharged. We had difficulty with the granting of discharge to the Economic and Social Committee because, although various requirements of the European Parliament in relation to questions of travel expenses claims and similar problems that attract a great deal of interest in the media have been met, we are somewhat concerned to find that there have been some differences of opinion within the Committee in relation to certain decisions on appointments – I trust you will understand my wish to choose my words with care here. The rapporteur has expressed her concerns in relation to this issue at Committee level and we shall continue to monitor the situation. However, this will not prevent us from requesting discharge.
In the case of the Council, the situation is slightly different. Firstly, I would like to express my satisfaction and pleasure to find that the Danish Council Presidency is doing us the honour of following this debate. This is a first in all my time as a Member of his House. This is an encouraging sign that we are moving away from the phase where the institutions simply ignored one another during debates. I will return to this point at the end of my remarks.
Each year, we find ourselves in a situation reminiscent of ‘Groundhog Day’. In other words, we start the business of discharging the Council for its management of the budget, or at least for the portion that involves European Union resources – in other words, the general budget funds. We assess the documents and we ask pertinent questions. The Council never gives any answers, however.
Instead, we have received an offer from the Council to negotiate an interinstitutional agreement. This is something to be welcomed from my point of view at least because I have a difficulty when I find the Secretaries-General of the two institutions negotiating with one another, despite the fact that they do not have a political mandate – please do not take this personally Mr Welle – because, in my opinion, they have failed to pay enough attention to the aspirations, wishes and positions of the responsible Committee.
Thus, we have a proposal for an interinstitutional agreement on the table and the position of my group in this House is that we should put the opportunities offered by this interinstitutional agreement to the test. Unfortunately we are in the minority here, because most of my fellow Members believe that the documents describe the functions adequately.
At this point, I would like to emphasise once again that the Group of the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats does not wish to reduce the rights and responsibilities of the discharge authority, but that it would like to see how far we can get with the Council if we follow the strategy of negotiating this interinstitutional agreement. The main problem is reciprocity, as the Council insists that it should be allowed to examine Parliament’s auditing process, adopting the same high-handed approach as it takes to answering our questions to the Council.
One more thing, Madam President; the bottom line for Parliament is that we cannot accept a situation where civil servants from the Member States control the public representatives who express the will of the citizens of Europe. Everything else is open to negotiation, so perhaps we shall succeed in making a little progress today."@en1
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