Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-11-15-Speech-2-238"
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"en.20051115.26.2-238"2
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".
Mr President, my group views with concern the proliferation of agencies in recent years. The number has grown enormously. They seem to be spread like confetti around the Member States, more to ensure that each Member State has an agency on its territory than with a view to the need and benefits of having a separate EU agency to deal with the matter in question.
Our concerns therefore relate to a number of things: to the cost, of course; but more importantly, does not this proliferation of agencies undermine the executive role of the European Commission? There are politicians in some of our Member States who would like to see the Commission broken up into a series of specialised agencies to undermine the supranational executive that we have.
What of accountability? The Commission is at least accountable to this Parliament. Commissioners and their civil servants can very easily be brought in to be questioned and cross-examined. We vote their budget. If necessary – heaven forbid that it should be necessary – we can vote them out of office. However, when a matter is delegated to an agency with its own structure – usually intergovernmental – and its own board, which is accountable in a totally different way, then the accountability is inevitably lessened.
We therefore support the idea of an interinstitutional framework agreement to address some of these issues. It could at least correct some of the excesses. It could provide for proper accountability. It could have a standard structure. At the moment every single agency seems to have a different structure. Parliament could be involved in the appointment and scrutiny of the board.
I hear the Council’s answer that it does not like the idea of an interinstitutional agreement but instead would be willing to look at a horizontal proposal. I would like the Council to enlighten us as to what kind of proposal that might be. Would it be a framework regulation or legislative decision of some kind? We will not give up pursuing this matter. We liked the approach that the Commission put forward in its proposal and we will not let go in terms of ensuring that, if agencies are to exist, they must be properly accountable to the elected institutions of the European Union and not go off on a tangent by themselves."@en1
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