Mr President, what we have here, albeit under a somewhat technical title, namely the creation of executive agencies to be entrusted with certain tasks in the management of Community programmes, is a rather important reform, and an element which is by no means peripheral to the administrative reform which is taking place within the Commission. I must say straightaway that the Committee on Budgetary Control and this House are very much in sympathy with the principle of the agency that has been proposed to us, and our initial impression is a favourable one, because, in creating this agency, the Commission is responding to a matter of fundamental concern to Parliament, a concern which it expressed in the context of the budgetary procedure for the year 2000. Parliament was anxious to see the dismantling of the technical assistance offices (TAOs), which were not supervised very well and which did not come under the Commission’s control, and to have them replaced by establishments which would exhibit both the security which goes with the public nature of the institutions and, at the same time, the flexibility of management and operation which is necessary in order to accomplish a certain number of tasks, in particular the implementation of certain programmes. In short, what we said was, – ‘Let us abolish the TAOs, but let us not replace them with central Commission services, but rather let us invent something new’. These agencies are certainly something new. The Commission’s proposal forms part of a greater whole, an externalisation policy which comprises three facets. First, there is the privatisation of certain specific, precisely defined tasks, a privatisation which we are in favour of provided that the private persons who will be responsible for these tasks are not given integrated administrative tasks to do. Second, there are the executive agencies themselves. Finally, there is a third aspect about which we are more doubtful, but which we are not about to discuss this evening, and that is the creation of national agencies, which will be responsible for running a certain number of programmes in the territory of the Member States. The proposed regulation which you have before you is concerned only with the statute of the agencies. Therefore, Madam Commissioner, in principle you have the support of the rapporteur and the support of the Committee on Budgetary Control. That does not mean, as I am sure you suspected because you know me, that we agree with everything. There are a certain number of points on which we agree and a certain number on which we disagree. As far as the first group is concerned, as I have already said, we agree with the principle of the agency. We also agree with the detailed rules for the management of that body, part of which will consist of staff seconded from the Commission, because we want this agency to be clearly subordinate, both politically and administratively, to the Commission. The other part of the body will consist of more flexible staff recruited on the basis of temporary contracts tailored to the management flexibility needed for programmes of limited duration. We also believe, and I think that this is a point on which we agree, that these new bodies must be subject to the same controls, and the same obligations regarding communication, audit and OLAF competency, as the Commission’s central services. On this point, I think we see things from the same angle. On the other hand, there are a certain number of points on which we still have doubts which need to be cleared up. The first of these concerns the definition of the tasks that are likely to be externalised and entrusted to the executive agencies. This is an old issue, and one on which the Committee on Budgets and the Committee on Budgetary Control are in step, even if some of us are not entirely of the same opinion. We would like these externalised tasks to be really externalised, because they are of a temporary nature and because they require the use of temporary or specialist staff, but we do not want them to be externalised simply because they would cost less because they would be using less well paid and less qualified staff. That is not our objective. Secondly, we believe that the Commission’s legal responsibility should be complete and direct. This is a point of law on which we may disagree, but I do not believe that we are fundamentally opposed to one another. In the same way, and this is quite an important technical point which Mrs Theato, the Chairman of the Committee on Budgetary Control, is particularly keen on, we would like to see discharge being granted to these bodies at the same time as discharge is granted to the Commission. We do not want them to be separated, and we do not want to have to know about innumerable separate discharges. We want to be able to decide on discharge with a single vote, for both operating appropriations and administrative appropriations. I am approaching my conclusion. There are still two points on which we still differ, and which are causing a problem at the committee stage. First of all, the rapporteur had proposed that 25% of the staff of the agency should actually come from the Commission, although the Committee on Budgetary Control did not go along with this proposal and has not, in fact, agreed to it. On behalf of our group we tabled an amendment which was intended to reinstate this request, but slightly altered, and after negotiations with the Commission we specified that the figure of 25% would not have to be achieved until after a certain time had elapsed, in this case a period of eighteen months, which would enable the agency to reach cruising speed. I hope to be able to convince committee members in the Socialist Group to support this proposal. I have not managed to do so yet, but I have not given up hope. I now come to my last point, and it is an important one. It concerns the nature of the typical staff statutes and contracts. We disagree on this point, and I am concerned because, following the Cocobu vote, I saw proposals for regulations which rather worried me. We are concerned to note that staff would be subject to non-renewable statutes. If this is the case, we shall find ourselves with staff of inferior quality, who are less loyal and who will not be in a position to ensure continuity of service on all occasions, thus giving rise to periods of interruption which will be detrimental to the interests of those who benefit from the services and for whom the programmes are intended. On this point, Madam Commissioner, I want to ask you for a firm commitment. We want to have continuity of service, and we want the staff who are used by these agencies to have renewable arrangements according to need, and not to have their contracts cut off arbitrarily and automatically while the programme is still going on. Those, Madam Commissioner, are the feelings of our committee. I shall stop there, having reached my conclusion, which is that we support your proposal in principle, while waiting to hear from you certain clarifications on the points which I have raised. Thank you, Mr President, for your patience, and I should also like to thank my fellow committee members for their warm support.

Political group: PPE-DE