Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-11-30-Speech-3-193"
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"en.20051130.17.3-193"2
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".
Mr President, one of the special features of the European Union is that its central administration does not just consist of faceless bureaucrats: it is headed by a political executive. The Commissioners are politicians who hold office thanks to the confidence they receive from the European Parliament, and only for as long as they continue to enjoy that confidence, because we can of course dismiss them in a vote of censure. That is essential to the political accountability of the system. It means that, unlike many international structures, our central administration – albeit small – is accountable. That is very important.
The hearings are a very visible part of the process of the appointment of the Commission, which underlines this principle of accountability. It is something relatively new. It was not in the original Treaties. The fact that we have a vote of confidence on the Commission as a whole and that its term of office coincides with that of Parliament was brought in through the Maastricht Treaties and enhanced with the Amsterdam Treaty. The hearings are not even mentioned in the Treaties. We have built that up ourselves. It is now an accepted part of our procedure and one which is welcomed by all democrats.
This report essentially confirms the practice we have built up, but it brings in three small innovations. First, it limits the written questionnaire that is sent out by committees to Commissioners beforehand. These have tended to grow and grow and, frankly, seem to serve no particular purpose when we know in fact that they are answered in a rather bureaucratic way beforehand.
Second, the report proposes that within Parliament we have a joint meeting of the Conference of Committee Chairs and the Conference of Presidents of this House to make a global evaluation prior to the debate in plenary and to declare the process of hearings closed. They could, of course, declare it still to be open and ask for a further hearing with one or another designate Commissioner. That gives extra flexibility.
The third innovation is to call for the European elections to be brought forward from June to May, to give more time for this procedure. That is something we should be asking for anyway as a European Parliament, because ever since we enlarged the Union northwards it has been a bit silly to have our elections in June, which is the main holiday period in the northern countries. May would be a much better time in any case to have European elections.
The procedure has worked well. What happened last time showed that it worked well and we are not asking for a right of censure on individual Commissioners. What happened last time showed that there are ways and means of correcting queries about an individual Commissioner through the President of the Commission, whilst maintaining the collegiality of the Commission. It works. If it had not worked we would not have Mr Frattini here with us today to take part in this debate, and it is with pleasure that I welcome him.
I also welcome his comments. They were slightly grudging at some points. However, I noticed that he did not challenge the fact that this report is entirely compatible with the Interinstitutional Agreement. It is in that spirit that it was drafted and in which I am sure it will be adopted tomorrow by this Parliament. I thank the rapporteur and all those who helped with this."@en1
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