Mr President, you never know what will happen in politics, but as things stand at the moment this could be the last time that Mrs Schreyer attends this debate as Commissioner for the Budget. I would like now to thank her for the openness she has shown toward Parliament over the years. As far as the role of rapporteur for the agencies that has been given to me is concerned, all I can tell you is that, based on the knowledge I have now, there is no reason to refuse to grant discharges to the agencies. That does not mean, of course, that there are no improvements to be made. We noted a number of matters last year with the agencies that will probably need more attention. In the first place there is the personnel policies they are pursuing. We would like to see greater transparency in general. How are people recruited and how do they get promotion? There are indications that this is done differently from how it is done in the Commission, whereas once these people become civil servants for an agency, they have the same rights and duties as civil servants working for the Commission. We think that this should be levelled up as far as possible. We also think that OLAF is fully entitled to get involved in the event of any problems with agencies. Finally, we think that the internal audit service of the Commission must pay more attention to what is going on in the agencies. Up to now this service has not had the time or has not had the inclination to get involved. We believe that it must do so in future. With some agencies that have their own incomes, there is a problem with the balances being carried over from one budget year to the next. Agencies can have their own incomes, but under the rules of the Financial Regulation, they may not use this income in the next budget year. A solution has been found for one agency, the agency in London. We think this solution should also apply to the other agencies. As a general rule, we also want to encourage agencies, where possible, to generate more income for themselves, so they cost the budget less. I really would also like to say something about the other agencies, but then in a personal capacity, in other words not as rapporteur. We are following Mr Bayona in his decision to grant a discharge to the Commission. I can more or less reiterate the comments of last year and of the years before that. It is still extremely unsatisfactory that there is no positive Statement of Assurance from the Court of Auditors. Every effort must be made to get this. We can only conclude that if we were to refuse to grant a discharge at this point in time, this would not serve any useful purpose at all, as the political consequences at the moment would not be in the interests of Europe. Now something about the Eurostat affair. There has been an explanation from the Commission this afternoon. As far as I am concerned, this explanation is not enough. This explanation from the Commission says nothing about the essence of the matter: political accountability. We heard from Mr Prodi, when he took up his position as President of the Commission, that there would be political accountability. We think that the Commission’s interpretation of this lacks substance. A Commissioner is responsible for the task assigned to him and should also render an account of that. If something goes wrong, he or she must take responsibility for that. We think it is a pity that three months ago, in response to the Kasaka follow-up report on the discharges for 2001, an amendment put forward by the Liberals was adopted with a majority of only one vote. In that amendment we said that it was regrettable that Commissioner Solbes had not taken political responsibility from day one. Clearly there is a different atmosphere in Parliament now, when we consider the many amendments that I now see to the Bayona report. All I am saying is that there was not as much opposition from the large groups in Parliament two or three months ago as there is now. With a view to the hearings before the new Commission at the end of the year, one of the important points we must emphasise must be what the Commissioners’ individual responsibilities are with respect to the implementation of the budget. After all, if we make every civil servant at the Commission responsible for his or her own area of work, then that should certainly also apply to the Commissioners.

Political group: ELDR