9th parliamentary term Karen MELCHIOR

One of the European Parliament’s key roles is to ensure the budget of the EU is well spent. This week, we scrutinised the budget of the European Commission, highlighting where improvements can be made. Unfortunately, some political groups decided to use the discharge to call for an end EU financial support for UNRWA, the UN-ran organisation that supplies hundreds of thousands of Palestinians with education and healthcare. Given the terrible humanitarian situation in Gaza, it would be irresponsible and inhumane to end our support, therefore I voted against this proposal. I supported amendments taking the Commission to task over the sometimes excessively generous salaries and pensions they receive, highlighting the benefits of the innovative approaches to cohesion funding that were used during the pandemic and calling for the further greening of EU cohesion funding.

In order to ensure Parliament’s budget is well spent, every year Parliament prepares a resolution on how it spent money in prior years, approves that spending, and proposes future adjustments. In the discharge of the 2022 budget, I voted in favour of amendments calling for more transparency on how Parliament spends money, better working conditions for the hundreds of interpreters, cleaners, technicians, cooks and crêche staff who make our work possible, more power for the EU’s anti-fraud agency when scrutinising our work, stronger rules to regulate revolving doors, and a move towards a single seat for the European Parliament, ending the monthly journeys to Strasbourg. The report also highlights the numerous benefits of using Open Source software in the European institutions. I hope Parliament will lead by example in the coming mandate.

One of the European Parliament’s key roles is to ensure the budget of the EU is well spent. This week, we scrutinised the budget of the European Ombudsman, who is responsible for promoting good administration and investigating complaints about how the EU is run. One particularly commendable decision by the Ombudsman’s office was to expand the use of Open Source software. The use of Open Source software cuts costs and guarantees technical independence and sovereignty of our institutions. It also contributes to achieving the public money-public code principle. It was one of the key demands of my report on digitalisation and administrative law, which I shared with the Ombudsman, and I am very glad to see that her and her office are leading by example. For this reason, I supported an amendment commending the ombudsman on her use of Open Source software.