Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2012-02-15-Speech-3-513-000"
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"en.20120215.24.3-513-000"2
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"Mr President, it is not easy to set your own budget. Therefore, I wanted to start by thanking all the shadow rapporteurs, the Bureau and the Parliament’s Secretary-General for their cooperation in putting together these guidelines. I believe now that there is a broad consensus that in difficult economic times, the European Parliament must play its part and make savings in its budget.
For example, I now believe that very few in this Parliament would argue against the proposal to freeze our budget. I believe certainly we need to ensure that the rise in the Parliament’s budget next year is below inflation. No doubt there will be discussions as to what inflation is, but at least there is now this broad agreement.
I am also pleased that the main recommendations in our guidelines have been accepted. I think that it is important as a Parliament that we identify savings in our own budget. I believe we need to avoid unnecessary new initiatives unless they are absolutely needed. I believe that we need to freeze our travel budget lines, pending the requested review from the Secretary-General which we requested as part of this year’s budget process. I believe we need to freeze all allowances for Members, both daily allowances and the office allowances, and perhaps have the objective of freezing all those allowances until the end of this particular mandate.
I also believe we need to examine all our budget lines, especially those budget lines which are always under-implemented. I believe that these are the budget lines that we should look to, to make savings in our budget. I believe that we need to ensure that we avoid new unforeseen building projects for the rest of this mandate. In the recent past, we have had many building projects proposed and now we need to take stock.
We need transparency so that this Parliament is fully involved and informed about building projects and therefore I welcome the request to have regular updates at the Committee on Budgets on the building projects which are proposed.
Another suggestion is to seek greater cooperation with other EU institutions, for example, cooperation on buildings, on translation, on interpretation, on security and on human resources. For example, there is already a joint agreement in place between the Committee of the Regions and the Economic and Social Committee working together jointly on many of these issues. I think perhaps we should take a look at that joint agreement in order to learn some lessons and maybe work with them in terms of joint work and cooperation, again with the aim of making savings. I certainly believe that there is a lot of scope for us to make savings in the Translation Service for example.
So I believe there are many possibilities out there for us to make savings, although I also accept that it is not always easy to identify and make those savings. Therefore, I have suggested that the Secretary-General comes forward with an idea for an independent evaluation of the Parliament’s budget. This is a way of bringing fresh eyes, a new pair of eyes to the budget, helping us to identify and make the required savings.
My suggestion is that we establish a working group between the Bureau and the Budgets Committee, who can bring in expertise from outside and, between them, look at making savings. I believe this working group could form the basis of an independent evaluation of Parliament’s budget. It could also look at a comparable study which was requested as part of this year’s budget process; a comparable study with other parliaments in Europe and maybe the Congress of the United States as well. Also, the working group could look at the travel costs review. We are promised a report on travel costs, again as part of this year’s budget process. This working group could perhaps look at that.
Finally, I would say to colleagues that I understand some will be concerned about this idea of a freeze in the Parliament’s budget. They may feel it is too difficult to achieve but, there again, there are others who will want to go much further and to cut the budget, and indeed some of the amendments in front of us today to be voted on tomorrow reflect that. However, I would hope that most colleagues in this House would agree that the guidelines which we put forward are a good compromise. A good compromise and a good way forward; a way forward which would allow us to make savings in the Parliament’s budget but also, at the same time, to ensure that this Parliament is run effectively."@en1
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