Mr President, far from granting discharge to the Commission in April, not only did Parliament defer the grant of discharge at the time, it also attached specific conditions to the recognised shortcomings, some of which had deadlines. As such, only Recital 33 of the motion for a resolution passed in April had still to be completed for the purposes of this report because we had requested additional information. I will make no bones about the fact that as rapporteur, I feel that if we are to take the discharge procedure seriously, we should not use discharge reports to fulfil additional requests, by way of a kind of safety net. Christmas is not for six months. Therefore we should only concentrate on the requests that were actually made. Both texts – that of 13 April and this one – must be read in conjunction with each other as a contribution to Parliament’s own reform process. What were the main shortcomings? Firstly, an unacceptably high level of so-called direct contracts or ‘private procedures’, which jeopardises the administrative culture because it means that there is no longer anyone looking into whether we could get better value for money. We are aware that steps have been taken that will hopefully bring about a change in this situation before long. Secondly, there is an unacceptably high level of inventory losses. Thank God it has not all been stolen, rather the money cannot be traced because of an antiquated inventory system. An electronic inventory system is in its early stages and we intend to enquire how this inventory system is working in practice in the course of future discharge procedures. Thirdly, promotions were not being awarded in accordance with legally watertight criteria. The Bureau has taken steps to prevent such things from happening in future. Here too we have yet to see how this new procedure will work out in practice. I can confirm that the Secretary-General of Parliament has provided all the information requested, as he did in April. I am therefore in favour, as I was in April, of granting discharge. A broad majority of the Committee on Budgetary Control has signed up to this. In Recital 33 of the April motion on Parliament’s grant of discharge, the discharge was linked with the Court of Auditor’s report on the finances of the groups, although everyone knows that only the groups themselves are responsible for their financial affairs. Yes indeed, these are public funds and so they must be accounted for. Although one can understand the attitude of the Court of Auditors, which only cooperates with Parliament as an institution and has therefore failed to cite the names of individual groups associated with specific shortcomings, I still feel that we should discuss this with the Court of Auditors so as to agree a different arrangement for the future. As a member of my group, I, for one, would not wish to be arrested for the financial misdemeanours of other groups. I believe the members of the other groups would feel exactly the same. I therefore think we should talk to the Court of Auditors about this, with a view to devising a more pragmatic reporting procedure for the future. Consequently, I was quite amazed to hear that the groups are no longer allowed to sweep certain abuses under the carpet, for fear of being seen as birds of a feather that stick together. I believe that any attempt to put all this off or suggestion that we should wait another year until everything has sorted itself out, would be doomed. The issue would catch up with us again sooner than we might think. It is quite remarkable, to my mind, that some groups did not keep their promise to the Bureau to publicise the reports by independent auditors. Of course they were not obliged to do this, and rightly so, but they did promise after all. All the more reason why it should strike me that one group is financing a foundation from its funds (i.e. the EU’s funds) which has a value of EUR 10.3 million on the stock exchange, under Luxembourg law. The law of Luxembourg is not particularly transparent and I feel we are entitled to expect such practices to cease. The real sting in the tail is that the group involved was the one that pushed for Parliament to defer its grant of discharge in April, in line with the German principle that there should be no holds barred on the information front. I am certain that they only did it so that we could all give in-depth consideration to these issues.

Political group: PSE