Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-11-20-Speech-4-013"
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"en.20081120.3.4-013"2
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".
Mr President, I would very much like to congratulate the Court of Auditors for the work which it is submitting to Parliament in the form of the Annual Report for 2007. In a series of constantly improving annual reports, in my opinion this is the best report that the Court of Auditors has so far presented. It is more informative, more colourful, so to speak, and clearer.
Members of the Court of Auditors, I have noted with satisfaction that you have resisted the temptation to add a touch of populism to this year's report.
On the basis of a number of different special reports and, in particular, this report, we will now have to evaluate whether the work done by the Commission in 2007 using European taxpayer's money was satisfactory or not. So far there have been a number of encouraging presentations, in particular from the Commissioner for the Cohesion Fund. The Commissioner for Research has also indicated that the criticism from this House and from the Court of Auditors in last year's report has fallen on fertile ground.
One area where things are still not working well is the cooperative effort to control the European budget which Member States are withdrawing from. Four Member States – Denmark, the Netherlands, the UK and Sweden – are giving an encouraging example of active cooperation. It is satisfying to see that a national court of auditors, such as that in Germany, is beginning to concern itself at a national level with the European money being spent in Germany and we hope that there will be a political debate on this subject.
Since the Wynn and Mulder reports we have been attempting to bridge the gap in the treaty between Article 274 and Article 5 by means of this requirement for national statements of assurance. While we are discussing this subject, Commissioner Kallas, I would be happy for the Commission to take a more helpful and active role in standardising these reports. This is something which your positive approach should help to bring about one of these days.
When we pass judgment on the quality of the Commission's work in our discharge, we will inform the taxpayers whether or not it is acceptable in overall terms. If we expect professionalism from other institutions, we must also take a more professional approach ourselves. I believe that it is both intolerable and ludicrous to hold debates in this House about whether this committee can continue to be a so-called neutral committee or not. It is not acceptable for a control committee to be regarded simply as a sort of add-on committee, because that is not professional. The times have long gone when the budget came under consideration in one place for six months or so and then for the rest of the year another committee was responsible for budget control.
We have not even looked at all the agencies yet and we are supposed to assure our taxpayers that everything is functioning correctly. We need professionalism from the other institutions, but we as a Parliament must also make an effort, otherwise we will not be able to stand up in front of the taxpayers."@en1
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