Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-05-30-Speech-3-184"
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"en.20010530.11.3-184"2
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".
Mr President, it is an honour to have ten minutes in which to address such a full House on a report which is, after all, quite important and even quite passionate about the subjects which it raises and which relate to it. It deals with the financial regulation of the European Union, the reworking of the financial agreement and obviously accompanies the reform proper of our Union and of our Commission, following the resignation of the Commission, following the report by the Wise Men, following the recommendations which the Committee of Wise Men made and which the European Parliament and our relevant parliamentary committees, especially the Committee on Budgetary Control, accepted in good faith.
That is why I am against the series of amendments seeking to reintroduce the concept of financial controller. We are not here to give the Commission discharge. We shall take great care to ensure that the system introduced and thought up by the Committee of Wise Men, recommended by the Wise Men, this committee which we honoured, is a viable system which works and can be controlled and, if it does not work, we shall be the first to condemn it. The system is up and running, however, and Parliament has endorsed it several times. So I urgently recommend that we follow the line taken in my report and by Mr van Hulten and reject this attempt to backtrack, which has no place in our debate, although we shall still have a great deal to discuss.
I will stop there, Mr President, because we are not happy at the moment with the Council's attitude and, if it is alright with you, we shall advise what Parliament's attitude will be tomorrow after the vote. I wonder – but we shall wait for the Commission – if we need to postpone the final vote. However, we shall see tomorrow morning.
As you will all recall, the Committee on Budgetary Control made a point of highlighting the importance of the work of the Committee of Wise Men. One of the most important reforms recommended by the Wise Men and endorsed by the European Parliament and the famous van Hulten report relates first and foremost to a key reform recommended by the financial regulation, that is, that we abolish financial control in its present form, with all its practical difficulties, and introduce an ex post audit, change the formula without changing the system – on the contrary – in order to extend and make controls more efficient, to quote the Wise Men.
So it is in the wake of this recommendation that our committees, both the Committee on Budgetary Control and the Committee on Budgets subscribed to the thinking of the European Commission and this is one of the points which I want to stress because I shall concentrate in the second part of my speech on the proposed amendments which appear to me to have no bearing whatsoever on the subject.
In the five minutes available to me, as rapporteur, in which to present my report, I wish to address the reform by saying that we have taken a very close look at your proposal, Commissioner, and have proposed 260 amendments, proof positive that we have done a proper job. The two Hughes procedure committees with Mr van Hulten, which I thank for working together so closely in order to make progress and keep to the timetable which we thought the Council was going to impose on us because it wanted to address this issue at the ECOFIN Council on 5 June. We asked in vain for the Council to be present – it is too late, the Council is not present, no matter – but we asked it and we pass on the message that we were asked to work quickly and we have worked quickly. We wrapped it up in a few months and I can assure you that it was no easy job.
So, Commissioner, we followed your lead. We proposed a great many amendments. I think that in certain areas we have, without doubt, tried to be diligent, to foster transparency, to foster greater budgetary prudence, a more efficient system, clearer, more transparent, faster application of standards for the beneficiaries of our aid, for those who implement some of our budgets, wherever there were shortcomings, and there are shortcomings, it must be said. In certain specific areas we noted a fair backlog in the implementation of projects committed but not spent.
We tackled the problem of supporting staff and tried to improve the definition of the concept of supporting staff and I trust that you will find that we have done so efficiently, Commissioner. We retained the specific rule in the financial regulation
with a quarrel which we settled thus. We think it is better to keep it in the financial regulation as a legislative instrument. We introduced the notion of financial statements, that is, source law, which we tried to turn into real legislation. We stressed the independence of OLAF. We tried to improve a text which, all said and done
we felt had the right idea.
So that finishes my five minutes as rapporteur. Now, in my own name and on behalf of my political group of Italian radicals, I should like to address the amendments proposed because, as you know, Mr President, something strange is afoot in this debate, in which 230 amendments have been tabled by the Committee on Budgets and by the Committee on Budgetary Control and in which we have a committee chair who has also tabled amendments, on behalf of her group of course. It is the law, it is the regulation which so requires, with her name against that of her own committee, of which I am a member. I am sure you will understand that this is rather strange. Imagine, Mrs Schreyer, you make a proposal, the Commission approves it and the following day Mr Prodi attacks you or amends the proposal which has just been voted by your colleague as such. It is, after all, rather strange. A committee which has already examined a great many of these amendments and rejected them. Then re-tables them on behalf of its chair. Its Kramer versus Kramer. I remember a very well-known French minister saying, "a minister shuts up or gets out".
So I think, Mr President, I do not know what you would do in my position if Mrs Fontaine amended a text on Nice, Mr Méndez de Vigo, a text already voted by Parliament. What would you do? Personally, as rapporteur I would vote against but, as a Member, I feel that there is food for thought here. Is it that either you are the guarantors of a body or you cannot go against the body which you represent? It seems a bit bizarre to me. Many of the amendments were, as I have said, rejected by the committee. So, inevitably, as rapporteur, I was obliged to say that I was against. It is embarrassing because it puts you in an awkward position. There was a consensus in committee to withdraw other amendments and here they are back on the table. It is embarrassing when you know that a committee has already given the thumbs down. Others have come in from the Court of Auditors. The Court of Auditors, however, is not a legislative body; we are all very fond of the Court of Auditors, but we are not here to act as messenger boys, we are here to legislate.
So this is want I wanted to highlight – and I have taken several minutes to do so – because there is something unhealthy here, although some of the amendments are, shall we say, more than honourable and a group of 233 members could have represented the amendments on someone else's behalf. When I see my chair presenting amendments against my report, in her own name, and against her committee, then I think that there are lessons to be learned. If you do not agree with your committee, you have to draw your own conclusions and perhaps – why not – think about resigning from a position if that position does not suit a man or women in politics who wants to more power, which is all well and good but then they should resign their position (you cannot umpire and play in the match)."@en1
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