Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2004-12-14-Speech-2-166"
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"en.20041214.12.2-166"2
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".
Mr President, the EU budget for 2005 is now at second reading in Parliament. I wish to thank the rapporteurs, Salvador Garriga Polledo and Anne Jensen, for their excellent work. I wish, likewise, to thank the Chairman of the Committee on Budgets, Mr Lewandowski, for his sterling leadership of the committee and Commissioner Grybauskaitė and Mr Nicolaï, representing the Council, for their constructive cooperation.
The EU budget for 2005 may well meet next year’s needs, but there are question marks over it. There was much wrangling over payment appropriations, which looked as if they were going to be too small. Outstanding commitments at present are about to reach the EUR 100 billion mark, of which approximately EUR 70 billion represents the Structural Funds. The poor levels of implementation of the budget in recent years have now created a backlog. Right to the end, the Council wanted to limit payment appropriations. It took much effort to bring payments up to the level of EUR 106.3 billion, which is still EUR 7.9 billion below the financial perspective. That, however, is EUR 500 billion, or more than 1% of the EU’s GDP. This budget ceiling proposed by six Member States thus haunted the conciliation meeting.
Even the Council, however, doubted the adequacy of the financing by adopting the joint resolution which proposed that any supplementary budget relating to the Structural Funds should, if possible, be adopted at one reading. The statement runs contrary to good budgetary policy as the budget has to include all known expenditure for the financial year. It should be mentioned that at the same conciliation meeting it was agreed to increase the payment appropriations in the Structural Funds this year by EUR 3.7 billion, because funds have run out. Of this, EUR 2 billion was new money.
In the budget debate, the issue of the rapid rise in the number of Agencies in the European Union was raised. Next year there will be 23 of them, of which five will be new. EUR 40 million from the flexibility instrument had to be spent to meet their administrative costs, or else there would have been no financing available. In recent times, a lot of Agencies have been set up as a result of trade between Member States. In 2000 there were still only seven Agencies. We should therefore take prompt action to discover whether the Agencies are the most effective way to develop the EU’s administration. It might be that this way we are establishing units that are hard to monitor and which are partially responsible for creating nothing more than a double layer of bureaucracy.
Another question is presented by the various associations and organisations that are granted appropriations directly out of the budget. These earmarked sums are actually against the financial regulation. We believe the system to be based on favouritism, which muddies the grounds for financial support, making them unclear. Parliament should remain a legislative body and leave implementation tasks to the Commission, which would be the best way of monitoring impartiality."@en1
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