Verbatim report of proceedings

Tuesday, 12 March 2013 - Strasbourg

10.10. Improving the delivery of benefits from EU environment measures (A7-0028/2013 - Oreste Rossi) (vote)

– Dopo la votazione:

  Jacqueline Foster (ECR). - Madam President, earlier on I wanted to make a point of order. I am glad the Commissioner is still here; it concerns a point of procedure, and perhaps the Commissioner will be interested in listening. I have no issue with the fact that the Commission – before votes – may want to make a brief comment, and on this occasion clearly the Commissioner had an extremely important statement to make, which had both very complicated and complex content. Why I would like the Commission to listen to what I am saying is that, when they do have lengthy statements to make before the President tries to get the votes done, time should be made on the agenda before the voting session so that the Commissioner him- or herself can come before the House – it could have been yesterday evening or this morning – to explain what they wanted to say.

That was the reason I made the point of order. I hope the Commission can take this on board: a brief one-minute statement is not a problem but a 10-minute, complicated statement is, and then we end up with very bad behaviour (which is not appropriate) but also the frustration of the rest of the House. I thank you for allowing me to speak and to make this point of order.

  Pervenche Berès (S&D). - Madame la Présidente, permettez-moi de rebondir sur ce qu'a dit notre collègue car, effectivement, le commissaire qui est encore présent parmi nous...

... was quite long in his speech, so unfortunately he has diluted the message he was supposed to deliver to this House. But the declaration was a full part of the agreement, so it was very important that this declaration be made in public in this House, during voting time.