madam president i will be focusing my comments on the commission budget and i would like to congratulate mr surján for everything he has done as the general rapporteur but in the absence of the coordinator of our group mr bokros who happens to be in hungary for a long-term engagement that he was committed to i am asked to present the group's position today
i understand that this is the third different group that i have presented views for in this house since i have been a member not that i have changed just the groups have
so the three points i would like to make in the debate today are as follows
firstly the general situation is a serious one which has already been indicated in a financial and economic manner
our deficit levels are at historic highs in several member states as the president of the council has indicated
indeed in some member states the debate is not about where the money is going to be contributed but about the levels of cuts which will be needed to bring the expenditure back into line as it is in my own country
therefore this is a very mixed debate on how we are going to make sure we can make the european union run effectively
here however we will be looking at the budget
in terms of the budget that we will be preparing for twenty ten it is a budget which obviously is at the beginning
we are in our opening gambits but in our group we will be looking very clearly at the quality of expenditure as the commissioner has said on expenditure where monies can be reasonably executed and not being in any way excessive in this regard because of the general situation we find ourselves in
my last comment relates to the comments made by our chair in the committee on budgets alain lamassoure
we must use this occasion it is the first year of a five-year parliament to look ahead
we must discover if we can from the commission when we are going to get the mid-term review how it will be shaped how we are going to be able to look ahead not just to the mid-term review but how we are going to approach future financial perspectives as mr böge laid out in his report in the last parliament
not least how we begin to set in train an interinstitutional process that will look at long-term trends and that will enable us to get the right budgetary analysis because without that it is really difficult to plan ahead
