Speaker: Damian BOESELAGER (Germany — Volt)
Political group: Group of the Greens/European Free Alliance
Date: 2021-10-19
Debate: General budget of the European Union for the financial year 2022 - all sections (debate)

  Damian Boeselager,  rapporteur. – Madam President, I am still in shock from this morning’s attack on our rule of law, and also on our institutions by extension, so excuse me if I’m still grappling with this, especially also because good institutions are really the solid rock on which we stand.
They are extremely important and a source of – and the first line of defence for – the prosperity and progress of our continent. Good institutions allow us all to negotiate our different ideas, our different interests and preferences, and decide a common political direction. They provide judgments, solve conflicts, discover fraud and fight villains who selfishly seek to profit off the community. 
Whereas bad institutions, on the other hand, allow a small number of foul apples to put their own power and money above the progress of the many. Bad institutions turn a blind eye to fraud and corruption and bad institutions open the door to state capture, inaction and inequality of citizens in front of the law. Bad institutions allow politicians like Prime Minister Morawiecki to act against the interest of his own people. 
So what is a good institution then? It’s, quite simply, one that is up to the task, that has the legal means, the people and the political backing to do its job, one that is independent and that can’t be corrupted. Do I think that our current institutions are up to the task? To be honest – and this is quite sad – I don’t think they fully are. We ourselves are completely to blame for this. Despite massive changes in the world and great new challenges for the EU, national governments have not reformed the EU since the treaty change in 2007, and the Council continues to block better decision-making. 
The EU institutions are not given the means to do their jobs well. We have had the stable staffing policy and cuts of staff for the last years, and somehow this golden calf of austerity really is hurting our institutions and endangering the progress and prosperity that I have been talking about. So we can’t really continue as we currently are. There are many reasons why this has become more of a problem today. 
First, let’s look at the recovery plan. We have an unprecedented amount of money that is flowing through the different budgets to the Member States. Hundreds of people are needed to really look in the various institutions, to supervise the planning, to monitor the spending of money and to organise the flow of it. Corona has also seen a vast increase in capacities to try to basically grapple with the situation, we have Brexit and other difficult procedures at our borders, and we obviously need to fight climate change, where more resources are needed. 
So Mr Ressler and I have been tasked to defend the Commission’s budget, but also the other institutions’ budgets, against indiscriminate and horizontal cuts. I wanted to use the opportunity here to thank the fellow shadows for the great cooperation that we had in coming up with Parliament’s position on these matters. 
Despite all these challenges that I have been outlining, the Council did not come up with a better and more, let’s say, detailed view on where we stand, but really tried to just go for stable staffing, austerity and always the same old narrative.
But today, Madam Minister, when we also formally start our discussions about the budget, I would ask you to potentially take into account all these factors that I’ve been mentioning and not just see these numbers, but also the tasks that stand behind them because they are quite important and we need to save our institutions.
To say it with slightly more fun words: to stop villains getting fatter, let’s make our institutions matter, to rebut the Polish letter, let’s make our institutions better.