Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, I recommend to you today to grant discharge to the Commission for its budgetary management of the sixth, seventh and eighth European Development Fund in the 1998 financial year. There has been a great deal of speculation in the run-up to the grant of discharge. I would like again to make it clear beyond doubt that to me, and, almost certainly, the overwhelming majority of the Committee on Budgetary Control, this was never about having a trial of strength with the Commission, or about weakening it. We have always recognised that the current Commission can only be held responsible to an extent for the mistakes of the past. After all, the current Commission only took up office in the summer of 1999 and we are examining the 1998 financial year. On the other hand though, this discharge can definitely be regarded as a test of the Commission’s willingness and ability to undertake reform. The Commission must also be given the opportunity, in the eyes of the public, to demonstrate that it is capable of tackling poor management and ensuring that corrective measures are taken within an appropriate timeframe. To this end, we proposed postponement and requested an action plan in April of this year. We were waiting for a clear signal that there would be a shift to greater accountability and better management, because EU external aid is highly significant. It accounts for approximately 55% of international development aid. I am now in a position to assess this action plan and have to say that after April of this year, this plan and cooperation with the Commission stepped up the pace of the reforms already introduced within the Commission. We found the Commission and its officials to be extremely willing to cooperate as regards the development fund, and we therefore have no hesitation whatsoever in recommending that this House grant discharge, because we believe that the right lessons have been learnt from past mistakes. That said, I would stress again that it was right to move and decide on postponement. Indeed Commissioners have since publicly acknowledged that there were major problems in this area. For example, on 15 May of this year, Commissioner Nielson told the Financial Times that the Commission machine was never constructed to deliver development assistance. It was designed for producing directives, regulations, conducting trade negotiations, and to facilitate political relations between the EU States. He said it does not work for development assistance. On 16 May of the same year, Commissioner Patten informed the House that there were over EUR 21 billion outstanding commitments awaiting payments, and that, in other words, there was an enormous disparity between payment appropriations and commitment appropriations. He said this was an embarrassingly large figure and that the Commission wanted to devolve more responsibility to delegations, and where possible, to national authorities in the field, so as to improve financial management. I would stress again that I believe our action plan is heading in the right direction in this very respect and that it will enable us – Parliament and the Commission that is – to jointly take more responsibility for this area and to ensure that there is better management. But Parliament must also take it upon itself to behave more responsibly from the outset during the forthcoming discussions on the budget, i.e. it must produce better planning in these areas from the outset and not just see its responsibility as being to adopt the budget and monitor the financial year at a later stage. Strictly speaking, we must now introduce a monitoring process for all areas so as to ensure that we no longer have to face problems of the kind that cropped up in the 1998 financial year. We take it as read that we have done the necessary groundwork to this end. Accordingly, I would like to reinforce the point that in future, we in the Committee on Budgetary Control expect to receive a six-monthly report from the Commission – indeed we have already been promised one – and that this close cooperation will enable us to simplify matters for the 1999 financial year and, I feel it is safe to say, for the 2000 financial year, and we will no longer be forced to use deferral as a means of bringing pressure to bear. However, I would emphasise, on behalf of the entire Committee on Budgetary Control, that this deferral was an important step towards accepting joint responsibility for the budget and making a joint declaration to the effect that we want to strengthen the European institutions and leave the European tax-payer in no doubt as to the fact that their money is being put to good use, that we are handling payments responsibly and are monitoring the Commission responsibly. But, and this brings me to my final point, I would also like once again to make it clear, as I started to earlier, that the debate about budgetary control and the budget must lead to a strengthening of the European institutions and not to weakening on both sides. I therefore also believe that in future, the Committee on Budgetary Control is going to have to concentrate much harder on the essential guidelines and not get so bogged down in the detail. I think we will be able to work well together with the Commission in this respect. (Applause)

Political group: Verts-ALE