Mr President, a few years ago discharges in this House used to be perfunctory debates, certainly not held on Tuesday mornings. But we now have a wider remit to discuss this subject. and over the last few years it has been realised that discharge is a very important part of the life of the European Union. Under Article 276(2), the EC Treaty requires the Commission to submit to Parliament any necessary information on the execution of expenditure and operation of the financial control systems. Article 276(3) of the Treaty requires the Commission to take all appropriate steps to act on Parliament’s observations concerning execution of expenditure. It should not be any surprise to outside observers, or those in the system, that as Parliament has become more authoritative in ensuring the democratic accountability of the institutions, it will not be simply fobbed off with a lack of reply to questions which have been asked, however far they go back into the past. I congratulate all the rapporteurs on the discharges before the House this morning. I have a few comments on Mr Kuhne’s and Mrs Stauner’s reports. Firstly, on the question of the Parliament discharge. There has been significant progress on a number of issues outstanding but it is clear from Mr Kuhne’s report today that there are still a number of issues to be clarified: the question of the calls for tender; the issue of the financing plan for buildings; the question of the security service for this House here, and not least the question which is raised under paragraph 15 of the Kuhne report, concerning personnel policy. Here it states and I quote: “deplores most strongly the residual impression left by these cases, whereby it would appear that favouritism plays a significant role in the granting of appointments to high-grade posts within the administration of Parliament”. If we take the context of this report we will see that it has to stand on its own merits. If we add to that the Court of Auditors’ report on the operation of the political groups, we have come to the conclusion in our political group that we need to postpone discharge on its own merits. It is not a question of the popping of champagne corks between Brussels and Strasbourg, that is an irrelevance if I might put it politely. It is not a question of parallelism, it is a question of substance. As for the admissibility of the amendment, I draw to the attention of the services of Parliament and to your attention, Mr President, the fact that Annex V of our Rules of Procedure does not apply to the Parliament discharge but applies to the Commission discharge and therefore our amendments should be considered to be admissible. Secondly, I turn to Mrs Stauner’s excellent report and the explanatory statement. It is a pity Mrs Morgan is not still here in the Chamber, because I understood her to say that you cannot just leave a discharge to systems alone; it is the question of access to information, so that we as a Parliament can grant discharge. You can ask for access to information, but if you do not get it then you have to start applying a certain rigidity and postpone discharge. The explanatory statement very clearly sets out the reasons for so doing. I come to two points here. The first is access to information. We do not have at this time a framework agreement between Commission and Parliament – that is still outstanding in the context of Annex III. Why? Because Parliament and the Commission cannot agree about what access we have to information. The impression is left that we are foot-dragging, but in fact we are not getting complete answers to the questions put by Mr Bösch and Mr Blak. Parliament is not getting the answers it requires. Secondly, the question of the disciplinary procedure. It is an arbitrary procedure. It seems that high officials get off and ex-parliamentarians, who are in the Commission services get downgraded for no apparent reason and against the information available. I am thinking of the case of Mr Zavvos in particular. Therefore we, as a Parliament, should look at each of these cases as it stands. My group will be in favour of postponing discharges both for the Commission and for Parliament until all the information is available to us.

Political group: PPE-DE