Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2012-05-10-Speech-4-035-000"
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"en.20120510.9.4-035-000"2
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"Madam President, I wish to give the opinion of the European agencies from the perspective of the European Socialists. We are speaking about the agencies, which form an important part of the European institutional superstructure. They were created by the governments in agreement with the Parliament to benefit European citizens by performing the assigned tasks. In other words, they were not established by accident. Every single agency was created through a political and policy-based codecision procedure, and their operation is sometimes very complex. These organisations are too important to be used for power games and political games, and suggesting their abolishment is also something that could have serious political consequences.
The agencies play an important role, which is why it is crucial that their operation and management be as flawless as possible, since that is the way to guarantee their good reputation in the minds of EU citizens. Nevertheless, the European agencies operate from less than half a per cent of the European Union budget. They are subject to just as strict controls during the discharge procedure as any EU body. In our opinion, such controls need to be proportionate with their weighting in the budget. Disproportionately strict control in itself is wasteful, and currently we feel that the organisations of the European Court of Auditors and the European Parliament in charge of the discharge procedure are using their limited personnel and material resources to deal with the agencies to a disproportionate degree. We believe that needs to end. It is unacceptable that we are wasting half our resources on cases accounting for roughly half a per cent of the budget.
We had serious concerns regarding the highly critical approach of the rapporteur, because she worked on a basis of guilty until proven innocent. Instead, we think that good faith and a natural sense of justice need to be taken as the starting point until the contrary is proven. I think that the remarks made so far have borne out our approach, since the opinions given by the committees were significantly more positive here, in the part-session too, than the opinion of the rapporteur, and I think that Parliament as a whole is more inclined to agree with that.
I now wish to address some points consistently raised in the report, namely, the question of how can we use the most appropriate procedures and tools to avoid potential conflicts of interest, especially in the case of those agencies that need to bring in industry or technical experts. We therefore recommend, as did the Ombudsman, that special attention be paid to this question. We strongly supported the European Court of Auditors preparing a special report on this topic, and we also strongly support the interinstitutional working group of the Council, Commission and the Parliament keeping this topic on the agenda. However, that is not a reason not to approve the 2010 discharge. I would like to say therefore that the approach adopted by the rapporteur needs to be reflected on. In the future, it would be wise to prepare a report in cooperation with colleagues from her own party and the other parties from other committees that is better accepted in Parliament."@en1
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