Mr President, Commissioner, first of all, I would expressly like to thank Mrs Dührkop Dührkop for the excellent work she is doing in the way of follow-up to Budget 2000. I believe it has rarely been the case that a rapporteur has had to contend with in excess of 60 carry-overs and five supplementary and amending budgets in the course of one financial year. A multitude of amendments and additions to the original budget plan prompted her to say, in the course of the last discussion we had on supplementary and amending budget 4 that she no longer recognises her own baby, that is to say Budget 1999. If what I am about to say has a ring of criticism about it, then it is not directed primarily at you Mrs Schreyer, for you are not the one who has had to take responsibility for this over the past few weeks, but when we as a Parliament draw up a budget at the end of a year, i.e. in the autumn, then we take for granted the fact that we are setting priorities in this budget and that these priorities are also the ones that will actually be applied in the course of the budgetary procedure and will be put into practice. Put another way, we assume that the things we consider to be important will actually be implemented in the form of policies. What we are in fact seeing is this budget being amended rather drastically for the fifth time. I am aware that we requested that the budget be amended a fifth time, directly on account of OLAF, and we stand by this, but all the same we must ask ourselves whether there is any point in setting priorities in the course of budgetary negotiations if they are only going to be revoked at a later date. Here is an example from last year: ultimately, the Committee on Budgets and also Parliament pushed very hard for a line covering aid for Armenia and Georgia to be increased. We were aware that not everyone was in agreement with this but pushed it through nonetheless. What we have found to be the case is that in the course of this year the additional three million that we earmarked were not used at all, rather they were completely dispensed with because the measures could not be implemented or because the decision was taken not to implement them. That is our problem. In future, we would like to know – and this is why we intend to monitor implementation more closely than before – what becomes of our priorities? We intend to ask you repeatedly in the course of the year what has actually happened in certain cases. This is also a task that we will entrust to our committees when we say to them: when you outline policies and literally follow our every move in the course of the budgetary procedure and say we need another EUR 100,000 there, for example, then would you please continue to follow matters up when it comes to implementation. I am also directing this comment at our own committees. It is not enough just to make one’s presence felt here in the budgetary procedure. What we have done in the course of the last few years is to incorporate an ever increasing amount of reserves into the budget in order to be able to improve control and become more heavily involved in implementation. But that truly cannot be the right way of going about things! Allow me also to direct a comment at the Commission on the subject of SAB5: you are of course aware that we were a new Parliament, – and I really must make our disapproval very plain at this juncture, as we approach the end of the year – yet still you introduced a supplementary budget in the summer recess, when we were completely unable to react to it because the new Parliament was not up and running at that stage. That is no way to behave! It is our intention – and you can rely on this being the case – to keep a very close eye indeed on this in future, that is to say on how you behave towards us and what prospect there is of us actually living up to our responsibilities. There is one more thing I would like to say as what I have said so far relates to the current budgetary procedure. We are now embarking on very difficult negotiations and there are figures in the frame again which none of us are very confident will actually form a sound basis. We concluded an interinstitutional agreement at the beginning of this year which was to strengthen people’s faith in cooperation between the Council, the Commission and Parliament. If this faith is to be justified, then what we produce in consequence of our decisions and in our discussions must have a firm basis. I want to make that very plain and make specific reference to the figures that have been placed before us for Kosovo. We must have very reliable figures for this, otherwise we will be constructing a budget that will grind to a halt in the course of next year. This would mean us having to reallocate and redistribute from left to right again something in the order of hundreds of millions, and a budgetary procedure cannot be used to this end! We want there to be a firm basis now; we want it to be made plain that the situation in Kosovo has gone on for several years now and that we must work together on this for several years to come. We want there to be a firm basis that is long-lasting. For we are not justified in undertaking an infinite number of reallocations and carry-overs and supplementary budgets when this gives the impression that we did not make a good enough job of our work to begin with. (Applause)

Political group: PSE