Brussels, 27/03/2008 (Agence Europe) - The European Parliament is preparing to grant discharge (on 23 April) to its president on the implementation of operational expenditure for the year 2006. With the adoption on Wednesday 26 March of the report by Javier Pomes Ruiz (EPP-ED, Spain), the budgetary control committee calls for work to be continued with a view to putting in place a statute for MEPs' assistants by the beginning of the next EP's mandate (July 2009). This requirement is now necessary after problems detected in the system for MEPs' assistants' remuneration (EUROPE 9620).
According to the amendments voted in budgetary control committee, the working group on the members' statute, the assistants' statute and the pension fund (set up following the decisions of those senior EP bodies) should include a member of the budgetary control committee. Martine Roure (PES, France), who chairs the working group on the statute and assistants, has urged MEPs to give her their full support in finding a solution to this matter, according to a press release diffused by the EP press services.
An oral amendment by Ingeborg Gräsle (EPP-ED, Germany) adds that service providers must be paid [Ed.: when fulfilling a contract for an MEP] by a payment agency based in their own member state. The amendment also states that MEPs may not employ members of their family.
Another amendment put forward by Mr Gräsle expresses surprise at a recent recommendation by the Conference of Presidents that MEPs be allowed to acquire new pension entitlements under the voluntary pension fund following the entry into force of the new Members' statute. The discharge resolutions for 2004 and 2005 had stressed that this fund's activities should be limited from the start of the next term to making payments for entitlements already acquired. (L.C.)