mr president i welcome this report on parliament's budget guidelines and i welcome the discussion on what our priorities are to ensure that parliament can do its job
the initial report was perhaps understandably vague and general
however the amendments at committee stage ensured we are now clear on what is important
the committee on budgets tried to balance the need to recognise our responsibilities following lisbon with the need to keep increased spending as low as possible and that is particularly important with margins and public finances being so tight
i am sure all members will take that point on board
that is why deciding our priorities in these guidelines is crucial and of course it is not just about spending money
it is also about looking for savings and it is about spending the money in the best possible way
therefore i am pleased that for example the need for an integrated knowledge management system that would bring together all the different sources of information for members and citizens is widely accepted
the analysis of europarl tv to see if it is effective or not is also welcome
an evaluation of a secretarial allowance and the global cost of employing more staff including accommodation i believe is also vital as is a medium- and long-term building strategy for the parliament and other institutions which perhaps we should be working with much more closely than we are already
and of course there is always the difficult issue of the twenty threshold agreed so many years ago
i and the committee on budgets believe that any changes to that twenty should be the subject of a discussion between the committee on budgets and the bureau and eventually between all the different institutions
it should not be a unilateral decision
the s d group have tabled a few more amendments to be voted upon tomorrow which we believe will improve the guidelines even further
one amendment points out the difficulty of putting all administrative expenditure under heading five another amendment calls for the early publication of the guidelines and estimates to ensure we can make our decisions in a proper and timely way
i hope tomorrow colleagues will support these and other amendments which are aimed at improving the guidelines
i would also hope that colleagues would recognise that following the agreement of these guidelines we will have to undertake difficult discussions on the estimates recently published by the secretary-general
only then will we begin to talk about our priorities and only then will we have the proper discussion to achieve the balance between functioning as a parliament and keeping our expenditure as low as possible
