Mr President, before I start I want to welcome you, honourable Minister, to the European Parliament and to its plenary part-session. At the same time I want to thank Commissioner Liikanen especially for his valuable co-operation. Your work with Parliament has been transparent, decent and honest. My own maiden task relates to the administrative course of the year 2000 budget, which affects more institutions than the Commission and the Council. The combined budget for these institutions is EUR 1,288 million. This is a 3.66% increase on last year’s budget. The addition is remarkably large though it is within the framework of the currently valid agreement between official bodies. The budget of the European Parliament does exceed the share agreed by Parliament itself in accordance with the gentleman’s agreement, which is 20% of category 5, because it currently stands at 20.3%. This naturally means that some pressure for cuts is directed at Parliament’s budget in the hearing. Recently, the European Parliament has observed great discipline in budgetary policy. In the staffing policy of the official bodies, great moderation has been observed, which meant that staff increases were less than in the previous five-year period. Between 1995 and 1999, Parliament’s staff increased by eleven people, and likewise, the staff of the Court of Justice increased by eleven people. The Court of Auditors received a considerable increase in resources in 1997, and it grew to have a total staff of 49 officials. The Committee on Employment and Social Affairs as well as the Committee on Regional Policy increased their staff by ten people. This has been achieved by employing a deliberate staff policy and by redeployment of tasks. We therefore have a good inheritance which we should cherish. Now a change is threatening this development, in which the EU is attempting to save taxpayers’ money. Different institutions are aiming to gain substantial increases in the number of posts. In connection with this, it must be stressed that the European Parliament is an important example. If the European Parliament attempts to increase its own staff considerably, this is a clear signal to other institutions. The same can be said concerning the promotion of grades. For this reason, the European Parliament has to create alignment in this budget hearing concerning the budgets for the next few years. Now it must be decided what kind of disciplined staffing policy the European Parliament wishes to follow, because it has quite a lot of authority in this matter. I want to stress that in leading the way for the other EU institutions, the European Parliament cannot evade its responsibility in this matter. My predecessor in this post, Edith Müller, drew attention to activity-based budgeting. Put concisely, Parliament directs money to official bodies for administration as a lump sum, and each official body can itself decide on the basis of its own unique organisation about the salary grades to be imposed and increases in those grades. I support this idea fully. The fact of the matter is that activity-based budgeting is the only sensible way of developing administration of staffing in the different institutions. It is not particularly sensible that the Committee on Budgetary Control and the President of the Council discuss the establishment of one C-grade when there are 1,776 C-grades in Parliament. It is much better to discuss allocations and grant them without analysing them in minute detail. This point of view also accords with the report from the Group of Independent Experts. It emphasises the need for personal responsibility as well as economic responsibility at lower levels of the official machinery. The only means of stressing this responsibility for improving the administration as well as for improving the supervision of the financial management is to delegate this power and responsibility to lower levels. At the same time, we must improve one urgent problem in particular, namely the slow payment transactions of the EU. It is incongruous and objectionable that the EU needs longer payment times than Member States or enterprises whose budgets can be many times the size of the EU budget when compared. The development of staffing policy must be regarded as an important part of EU policy. Activity based budgeting, the division of allocations and responsibility amongst lower levels of the administrative machinery, an efficient monitoring of monetary transactions as well as emphasising personal responsibility still require a lot of work. These issues must be clearly borne in mind when staffing legislation is reformed in the next few years. Therefore, and for this reason, it is possible to strongly agree with the Council’s demand that the Commission must set about preparing new regulations on staffing. With these thoughts in mind, I would like to consign the Council’s budget proposal to a reading in the European Parliament.

Political group: ELDR