Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-03-11-Speech-2-039"
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"en.20030311.3.2-039"2
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"Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, I would like to respond to a number of remarks that have been made about these Budget lines from the point of view of foreign policy. Traditionally, in the Member States, foreign policy is a matter for governments, but the parliaments are involved via the budget procedure, which enables them to influence foreign policy and the government's setting of priorities.
As there is something of a lack at European level of any counterpart to this sort of democratic control, we welcome the attention given by the Convention to a wider range of options for Parliament to exert influence on fundamental issues of finance for foreign policy concerns.
Above all, we welcome the fact that it was possible, in the course of the 2003 Budget procedure, to come to an agreement with the Council on information concerning measures in the area of foreign and security policy. For the Council to take significant steps to accede to Parliament's wishes is a new thing, and although it did not, initially, keep to the undertaking it had given during the Budget procedure, information on our activities in Macedonia has now found its way onto the table. The most recent consultation with the Council made it possible for this to be guaranteed, and I see this as having been a step in the right direction. Such cooperation between the Council and Parliament is a foundation for our future endeavours. It is for this reason that we consider particularly important the passage in the guidelines in which Parliament lays renewed emphasis on its willingness to work together with the Council on the common foreign and security policy, and on its own insistence on its involvement to the fullest possible extent in budgeting for joint actions, planning them and taking decisions concerning them. We have had problems with this in the past, in that financial undertakings given by the Council meant that Parliament ended up being obliged to provide the funds from the Budget. That can be changed if Parliament is informed and involved in good time. If that happens, I think these Budget guidelines may well usher in a new stage in cooperation between Parliament and the Council.
Still on the subject of foreign policy, let me make another observation concerning the ad hoc group that we have now set up to examine direct payments to the Palestinian National Authority. I think this ad hoc group gives us a good opportunity to cooperate with the Commission in seeing exactly what has been done with European taxpayers' money. We decided not to set up a committee of investigation, which would amount to laying charges at the outset, whereas we simply want to know how this direct aid worked and how we can organise it better in the future. This working group is about to start work. This is not so much a problem between Parliament and the Council as one between Parliament and the Commission, and we hope that, in the working group, the Commission will keep to its promise and be willing to work together with Parliament."@en1
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