Mr President, I too would like to extend warm thanks to the rapporteur for his report and for facilitating open communication. Mr Ferber’s report does not just contain political aspects but is in fact largely composed of administrative aspects. I will start by quoting and commenting on a number of political statements. My group wholeheartedly agrees with the line taken in the report that the Council and Parliament should draft a statute in the short term and should do this in joint cooperation. They should compile a statute for the Members of the European Parliament, and, independently of that, a statute for the Member’s assistants. We support this and hope that it can be brought to a conclusion during the course of this year. The report also contains a political comment regarding the separate budget lines required for the parliamentary groups on the one hand and the European political parties on the other. We must avoid hidden subsidies for European political parties at all costs. We all know that it will be some time before a statute is drawn up for the European political parties and I welcome the fact that, in the meantime, the Secretary-General has been asked to establish transparency in the use of appropriations by the parliamentary groups and the political parties. Quite apart from this, the report also covers many administrative aspects. For example, we have been asked to pass judgement on the fact that the Directorate for Committees and Delegations must comprise five A posts, two B posts and one C post, and that one A post and two B posts must be added to the Directorate-General for Personnel. It is not because I am new, I think, that I have great difficulty in passing judgement on this. In my opinion, it is mainly up to a manager to take responsibility for the precise detail of personnel policy. It is also very difficult for the groups if it is decided in the plenary how many additional posts are to be created within the political groups. Surely, a great deal depends on the organisation of your group and maybe not every group wants to work in exactly the same way. I think that we should really re-think the system. I understand that during the reform of Parliament, consideration will also be given to allowing groups to take responsibility for their own affairs and I wholeheartedly support this. I would also like to comment briefly on the support which has been requested for the parliamentarians. We have agreed that a study will be carried out which will also be linked in with a study commissioned by Mr Rothley into what exactly it is that the parliamentarians need in the way of support for their work. I struggle somewhat with the fact that we are running ahead of this study’s conclusions because we do not give our verdict on the Bureau’s conclusion in Mr Ferber’s report. The Bureau concludes that expenses for assistants should be increased by 20%. In failing to pass judgement on this, we are giving the impression that we have accepted it. I am not against this increase, in principle. What I do object to, however, is running ahead of the report and I am also opposed to it because I am sure that in September, it will transpire that we will need to prioritise various issues. For example, the rent we pay for the buildings may increase. We will need to decide whether we want to inject more funding into other institutions in preparation for enlargement. We will no doubt return to these points of criticism in September when we will have the precise figures in front of us. As such, it is not really a criticism but I do object to running ahead of a decision.

Political group: Verts-ALE