European Parliament
Thijs Berman,
rapporteur for the opinion of the Committee on Development Cooperation.
(NL)
Madam President, the role of the European Parliament is, as is the case with every parliament, to legislate, to represent the voice of the voters and to scrutinise policy. We have those three roles. As regards the last role, namely that of scrutiniser of power, scrutiniser of the implementation of policy, we are not as good at that as we are in the role of legislator or that of voter representative.
This applies, in particular, to our scrutiny of the spending of the European Development Fund. This fund is outside the EU budget, thus a lot less transparent to us than the Development Cooperation Instrument. It is money that is spent outside the EU and, hence, it is even more invisible to us. However, we do have the power to grant discharge for it. That is very clever of us, but I think that we should not overestimate ourselves. National parliaments do not carry out audits either.
The European Development Fund should therefore be brought within the EU budget as soon as possible. That would strengthen our opportunities for scrutiny. It is very unsatisfactory to have to work like that. However, if it is brought within the EU budget, that should not be an excuse to reduce the total amount of development money.

