Strasbourg, 24/04/2007 (Agence Europe) - On 24 April, the European Parliament decided to give a discharge to its president for execution of its spending for the 2005 tax year. By adopting the report of Bart Staes (Greens/EFA, Belgium), the EP explained that from 1995-2005 it had made real estate investments of €1.4bn, which had allowed it to make savings of €700 million in rent and charges up to the end of 2006. It also asked its secretary general to provide a cost assessment “calculated overall and broken down for each site”, linked to the three locations of Parliament's work. The EP would then be able to “better target the structure of the costs it bears and identify the areas in which economies can be made”. Parliamentarians also want an impact assessment on the environment (CO2 emissions, waste etc) of the three Parliament sites, as well on the travelling involved to get to them. The EP is also requesting its administration to suspend payments from January 2008 for members who “have not proved that their personal subscriptions to the voluntary pension funds have been reimbursed from a private income”.
The EP also discharged the other institutions (Council, Committee of the Regions, Court of Auditors) and the different Community agencies (European agency for reconstruction, European agency for maritime safety, European aviation safety agency, European food safety agency, European monitoring centre for drugs and drug addiction, European environmental agency, Eurojust etc. (lc)