Mr President, Commissioner, Mr President-in-Office of the Council, ladies and gentlemen, in June 1996 a Council Regulation introduced a new revised European system of national and regional accounts, ESA 1995. This revised system superseded the old ESA 1979. Its use was made compulsory for all Member States. It applies to all acts of the Community – all except one. For budgetary purposes and for the determination of the Communities’ own resources, the old system is to stay in place for as long as the Council Decision of 1994 on the system of the Communities’ own resources remains in force. Back in 1994 it was assumed that there would be a new decision on the Communities’ own resources in 1999. As we know, it actually took until the end of September 2000 before the Council plucked up the necessary courage. At the same time, however, the Council tried to railroad us here in Parliament into a quick decision. A grim picture was painted of the scenario that would ensue if Parliament did not adopt the Council Decision without amendment and, later, if we insisted on a second reading. A delay, we were told, would be intolerable, the Communities’ own resources from VAT could not be collected properly, the Member States would incur high costs, because statistics would have to be collected for both accounting systems, and so on and so forth. Sheer balderdash! Since the year 2000 all the statistical offices have in any case been compiling their respective accounts on the basis of the 1995 system. The ESA 1979 data are not even available any more – a fact, incidentally, which the Council has now formally acknowledged in item 2 of its common position. So if we approve the common position at the present time, we shall merely be legalising a fait accompli. In other words, we had all the time in the world, and we wanted to take this opportunity to issue another urgent reminder of the importance of the revenue side in the compilation of the budget, to re-emphasise that revenue is the key to our prospects of funding our European policies. In its common position, the Council has only adopted the first of our amendments, the one in which we stated that the change from ESA 79 to the ESA 95 system for the determination of the Communities’ own VAT-based resources would have no impact on the level of these resources, neither in terms of the balance between Member States nor of the overall volume of the Communities’ own resources. The Council has rejected our Amendments Nos 2 and 3, in which we sought to guarantee better annual information for the budgetary authority on the state of play with regard to the Communities’ own resources in the form of a Commission working paper and to establish a trialogue with the Council and the Commission in this domain. Yes, the Commission has subsequently written to us, indicating its willingness to provide us with such a working paper every year, for which we are grateful. No, the Council does not wish to engage in talks with us. There is no provision for such a trialogue in the interinstitutional agreement, it says. Huh! So much for the constant preaching about transparency! Then there are those who say that the discussions about our own resources have no place in legislation on statistics. Admittedly, we cannot invoke Treaty articles, the Financial Regulation or interinstitutional agreements. Admittedly, statistical legislation is not the most attractive vehicle, it is not the ideal means of getting our demands through. We do not have a formal legal base, but we have a right, the right of equality for both branches of the budgetary authority in all matters relating to the common budget. If the participants in the Laeken Summit, the post-Laeken convention and the subsequent intergovernmental conference speak of democracy, they must also speak of the democratic right of Parliament to exercise full powers of co-decision on the European budget, and they must not only speak but also take action. If, by the end of these meetings, Parliament has obtained its rightful budgetary powers – co-decision on all expenditure and revenue – that will be a satisfactory outcome. Anything less, and the word ‘democracy’ in the mouths of Council members will not be worth the cost of the electricity that feeds their microphones! (Applause)

Political group: PSE