mr president out of this budget review we simply have to ask ourselves one question does the budget reflect the political priorities of the twenty-first century
if it does not it needs changing
is it flexible enough to reflect changing times
because one of my frustrations at the moment with the budget is how we deal with negative priorities
too much is left in the budget because we cannot change things because of the restrictions of the mff
if i could turn to activity-based budgeting and management i think the commission has made huge progress on this but i would warn against over-bureaucratising this exercise because what we want to ensure is a qualitative evaluation not simply ticking boxes
we do not want people spending all their time evaluating themselves when they should be getting on and doing some work
so we have got to be careful about that
i personally think the annual policy strategy would be better if it was every two years or every two and a half years to fit in with the parliamentary cycle
this would allow us to get a much clearer idea of our policy perspectives on top of the commission's annual work programmes
