2010 budget: other sections: guidelines

The European Parliament adopted by 610 votes to 21, with 41 abstentions, a resolution on the guidelines for the 2010 budget procedure for the other institutions.

The Parliament recalls that the ceiling of heading 5 - Administration - in 2010 is EUR 8.088 billion (representing an increase of EUR 311 million or of 4% compared to 2009, including 2% for inflation). It also recalls that the Parliament’s share of the budget - which represents 20% of the total budget for all the institutions - would still imply an "automatic" additional room for manoeuvre of EUR 62 million. There are, nevertheless, uncertainties as to the evolution of the EU-GNI and the circumstances in which the European Parliament has to operate. The Parliament therefore calls on the Bureau to submit realistic requests when presenting the estimates of the EP, while ensuring appropriate and efficient functioning of the institution.

The Parliament also takes the view that a significant margin should be kept in the budget estimates, rather than creating a specific reserve, in order to safeguard the possibility for the new Parliament to set its own priorities.  It requests a detailed and clear overview of those budget lines that were under-implemented in 2008 and looks forward to analysing the reasons for this.

The Parliament cannot stress enough the fundamental principle that all Members should be equally provided with full and quality services allowing them to work and express themselves and to receive documents in their native language. It therefore stresses that one of the major aspects of the Parliament’s budget for 2010 shall be to ensure optimal and equal access to language facilities for Members. Equal emphasis should be given to all aspects relating to Parliament's legislative role. It also points out that 2010 will be a year of continued adaptation for the Parliament as concerns the improvement of its working methods and modernisation, which go hand in hand with its political and legislative responsibilities, and the evaluation concerning a series of major multi-annual initiatives launched during the past few years. In this respect, it notes that, in the event of a future ratification of the Treaty of Lisbon, any necessary adaptations requiring budget expenditure would have to be dealt with at that time. Moreover, the Parliament confirms its intention to make the necessary provisions in view of a future possible enlargement of the Union to include Croatia.

Equal access to language facilities for MEPs: the Parliament states that 2010 should be a year when the utmost effort is made so that Members of all nationalities and languages are treated equally. It stresses, in this respect, the principle of democratic legitimacy through all its composite Members and their right to full multilingualism and that the budget should therefore be used to work towards this goal. The Parliament therefore calls on its competent services to present the current situation and developments foreseen for 2010 in terms of multilingualism.

Optimal use of resources: the Parliament stresses that maximum care should be taken to ensure that the overall budgetary and staffing resources are used in the most cost-efficient way possible to enable the institution and its Members to fulfil their ultimate mission on legislation successfully. This implies careful planning and organisation of its working methods and, whenever possible, the pooling together of functions and structures to avoid duplication of effort. The Parliament stresses that the growing co-decision powers put an additional strain on all of Parliament's services dealing with legislative work and will require high effectiveness as well as prioritisation of staff and related resources to enable Members to perform their duties correctly. It also believes that an analysis on how resources are used and how work is organised is sometimes necessary.

Dissemination of information to Members: the Parliament stresses that, since the major reform of "Raising the Game" launched some years ago, at least three new significant projects have been or are being established in order to provide information as complete and relevant as possible in relation to parliamentary work. It draws attention to the policy departments of committees and the analytical service of the library and notes a number of other resources in the Parliament, such as, for example, the "Legislative Observatory".

Communicating Parliament to citizens: the Parliament stresses that the administration should ensure exhaustive information to the newly elected Members concerning the services to which they are entitled. It reiterates its commitment to the three major projects in the field of communication policy - Europarl TV, the Visitors' Centre and the new audiovisual centre in the JAN building. However, in an amendment, the plenary deplores the fact that the visitors’ centre will not be established before the 2009 elections and requests full information as to the reasons behind this delay.

Buildings: recalling that this sector is of high importance for the Parliament both in terms of meeting its current and future property needs and in terms of managing in the best way possible the property which it owns, the Parliament reiterates its call to see a report concerning unnecessarily high maintenance, renovation and purchase costs relating to EU buildings, including the Parliament's. It requests, in particular, confirmation that the rule requiring the blacklisting of firms that have put forward unnecessarily high costs should be enforced.

Continuation of various aspects from the 2009 procedure: the Parliament agrees that the implementation in the first year of the new Statute for Members and the Statute for Assistants will need to be closely followed and considers that they must be consolidated in the best possible way, with a continuous update of the financial implications and forecasts. It also calls for improvements in the IT sector - including the internalisation of ICT experts and a clear strategy for Parliament's approach on ICT - before taking further steps in this area. The Parliament also considers that 2010 will provide an opportunity to continue environmental efforts, inter alia by the forthcoming adoption of a CO2 action plan by the Bureau.

Other institutions: lastly, the Parliament welcomes the constructive cooperation with the other institutions during the last procedure and, as last year, urges them to present realistic and cost-based budget requests that take full account of the need to manage scarce resources in an optimal way. It wishes to explore still further the possibility of better sharing the available resources between all institutions, especially when there might be free capacity in one area which, if organised properly, could be taken advantage of and used in another area and/or institution.