Ville Itälä, rapporteur. − Mr President, as rapporteur I would like to warmly thank the Chairman of the Committee on Budgets, Mr Böge. It is to his merit that the outcome, following conciliation, is so well-balanced. I would like also to thank Mr Virrankoski, my fellow rapporteur, for his great cooperation during the budget procedure. I am especially glad that Mr Virrankoski made possible the pilot projects in support of the sustainability of the Baltic Sea.

My main objective as rapporteur for the budgets of Parliament and the other institutions was to keep any increase as low as possible. That is why I named this budget ‘the taxpayers’ budget’. That objective has been achieved, and the increase has been kept to below 4%.

(FI) I just wish to remind everyone that paragraph 48 in the motion for a resolution concerns Article 29 of the Statute for Members of the European Parliament. The administration has requested, regarding this, that we should send a letter to all the governments of the Member States, asking how they want Members to proceed if they are re-elected with regard to the Statute for new Members. I hope that my amendment concerning this gets through and that this matter gets dealt with via the quaestors, because that is the right way to go about this.

As there has also been a public debate on this issue, I would like to say that this Article 29, decided by the Council, means that the governments of the Member States take a decision whether to apply the old rules or the new rules to re-elected Members. It is not the case that Members themselves are free to make this choice. Moreover, because this is a matter for the quaestors, it is only right that they should also decide whether to send this letter.