1994 discharge: European Parliament budget

The rapporteur, Mr DANKERT (PSE, NL), said that according to the findings of the Court of Auditors the decision to construct a new building in Strasbourg should not have been taken in the way it was. The rapporteur referred in particular to the fact that when it took the decision on Strasbourg the Bureau had completely failed to take into account that the financial perspectives at that time could not accommodate the financial consequences of such a decision. Moreover, as things still stood, if Ecofin or the Florence European Summit refused to extend the financial perspectives for heading 5, serious funding problems would result. Mr Dankert then pointed out that the report on discharge included for the first time a number of the Community’s smaller institutions, including the Committee of the Regions, and that serious concerns had been expressed as regards the latter’s personnel recruitment procedures. In fact, this Committee had almost completely failed to respect the geographical distribution of the recruitment process, which had resulted in a serious imbalance in its make-up. Finally, the rapporteur criticised the system used by some institutions for recruiting assistants, with the Court of Auditors being a case in point. Mrs THEATO (EPP, D) responded to the rapporteur by stating that ‘the decisions concerning the seat of the European Parliament in Strasbourg are political decisions that have to be respected if one wishes to ensure proper working conditions in Brussels as well as in Strasbourg’.