mr president i wanted to speak on the european parliament's discharge and first of all to thank the rapporteur for the excellent work he has done and the hard work he has done along with many others
i think it goes without saying that everyone in this chamber wants improvements to openness and transparency and wants value for money for taxpayers but we have to make sure that any changes to our processes actually are improvements
i am not sure whether some of the recommendations in the current report are improvements
for example a recommendation to remove the bathrooms within this building will prove very costly as will the proposal to replace the whole fleet of european parliament cars
there are also some recommendations within the report that are already included in the twenty eleven budget proposals
examples include a review of europarl tv to make sure it is effective and is doing its job and also the call for a long-term building strategy which is already in place or is at least called for in the future
there are also some recommendations within the report that cover issues where improvements have already been made or are in the process of being made
however there are of course some positives in the report and these should indeed be supported for example the reduction in paper wasted in printing
we all see piles of paper printed every day and surely there must be some scope for reduction there
also welcome is the call for a rationalisation of external studies and cooperation with other institutions on those studies so that we can avoid duplication and make some efficiency savings
i understand some amendments will be put forward again for the twenty eleven european parliament budget
the report also asks for an annual report from the risk manager and again i think that is a good thing
all this demonstrates that there is a need for a balance in the discussions we have on the discharge for the european parliament
i have no doubt that the budgetary control committee will ensure that it exercises its responsibilities in future and will want to report in the future on how the recommendations in this report are being implemented and dealt with
