Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, it would truly have been a great honour to speak directly after the Commissioner’s presentation of the Commission budget 2001. Instead, I have the honour of presenting Parliament’s budget before the Commissioner presents the larger budget to us. As rapporteur for Parliament’s budget, I am in a position to submit a proposal to you which, in my view, has three main features. First, and I set great store by this, the budget which we have prepared for you is a highly economical one. Secondly, we have learned our lessons from the justified complaints of the Court of Auditors and the Committee on Budgetary Control, for which we are all to blame. Thirdly, and this is a particular matter of concern to me, we have strengthened the European Parliament as the institution which represents the interests of the citizens of Europe. What have we focused on in Parliament’s Budget 2001? I should like to outline this briefly with reference to five main points. First: in the area of buildings policy, and this is an extremely important point, we must draw the right conclusions from the objections raised by the Court of Auditors. In other words, first, we must make the remaining payments in Brussels as quickly as possible – and we are putting the conditions in place for this – so that we can reduce costs – that is particularly important to the taxpayer – and, secondly, we must solve the problem of Strasbourg, of this building here, in a way which does not give cause for complaint. Both are provided for by figures in the draft budget. Secondly, we must also exercise extreme restraint in the area of staff policy in the coming year. We cannot allow Parliament’s staff numbers to increase exorbitantly just because there is some financial room for manoeuvre. And we must also solve the problem of promotion in the autumn in a way which is acceptable to all institutions. Thirdly, we must prepare ourselves for the enlargement of the European Union and this applies to Parliament even more than to the other institutions. However, this does not mean – and this is a particularly important point – that we will decide as early as next year on which new languages we can offer in our interpreting services and therefore which countries will be allowed to become members of the European Union in the first round and which will not. That is the wrong way forward. It is not the job of the budget to make such fundamental political decisions. They need to be taken elsewhere; in other words, we do, of course, need to talk to language schools in the candidate countries and we must develop and build up programmes, but we must also, of course, be clear that we cannot anticipate decisions which need to be taken at a political level first. I am pleased to see the Commissioner is now with us. I have taken over your role insofar as we are discussing Parliament’s budget first and shall then move on to the Commission’s budget. No I do not want your job, only you can do it, the role reversal does not stretch quite that far! Fourthly, we must take account of the increase in the responsibility of the European Parliament since the Amsterdam Treaty entered into force. The current Members of the European Parliament have more responsibility and more work in comparison with all their predecessors than ever before and naturally that also makes itself felt when it comes to preliminary work and technical equipment. I should like to thank everyone who supported me in this matter of concern. My fifth point is that this increased responsibility must also find expression with regard to groups in the European Parliament. I want to see a political parliament fighting for just causes and that means widening the basis for group work; it also means – and I make no bones about the fact – limiting the official services of the European Parliament. That is the only way of achieving a parliament with an enduring public profile. I was pleased to note that the Bureau of the European Parliament is thinking along the same lines and that one of the vice-presidents from my group is preparing a report on the subject. That is the right way forward. I have taken note of the amendments to my report proposed by my fellow delegates with a great deal of interest. I hope you will understand that I can support very few, because they no longer follow, in fact, they abandon the line which I presented in the Committee on Budgets and which was adopted by a majority in the committee. We must prepare for enlargement, but we do not need to start recruiting interpreters from the candidate countries as early as next year. Even the buildings policy must be considered with a view to enlargement, but I see no need to do so in the Budget 2001. We need to be a bit more realistic in our approach to the important question of enlargement. We moved into a new building in Brussels three years ago, we moved into a new building here in Strasbourg a year ago and if we tap the taxpayer on the shoulder again so soon after and say we need more buildings, more office space, he is only likely to agree to so much. We need to take account of that in our calculations. A budget with EUR 987 million is not very much in comparison to the budget of over EUR 90 billion which the Commissioner will propose shortly, but this is the taxpayers’ money and we must take our decision as the trustees of that money. The taxpayer expects us to take a prudent approach not only when we draw up the budget, but also when we implement and carry it out. We shall have to discuss this again in September during the first reading of this budget, once all the documents from the budget discharge procedure have been submitted. I should like today to thank the Bureau of the European Parliament, especially the vice-president responsible for budgetary questions, Gerhard Schmid, for their constructive cooperation, especially during the conciliation procedure between the Bureau and the Committee on Budgets. My thanks also go to the corresponding departments of Parliament’s administration for their prompt and conscientious preliminary work, without which this set of figures could never have been drawn up. However, I should also like to extend my special thanks to my colleagues in the Committee on Budgets for their fair cooperation. Bringing divergent opinions together to a consensus, mostly with too little time to spare, is not always easy. So my compliments to all my comrades-in-arms and finally, of course, a heartfelt thank-you to the secretarial staff of the Committee on Budgets for having prepared everything promptly and reliably in these difficult times. I think I can present you with a budget which has earned Parliament’s confidence. (Applause)

Political group: PPE-DE