Activities of Pierre KARLESKIND related to 2021/2107(DEC)
Plenary speeches (1)
Discharge 2020 (debate)
Amendments (32)
Amendment 5 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 10
Paragraph 10
10. Notes with concern, the specific finding by the Court, in its annual report on the implementation of the budget concerning the financial year 2020, of errors in two payments (i) an over-payment for IT-services caused by an incorrect application of contract terms and (ii) an incorrect payment of a subsistence allowance to a Member, following a mistake in an attendance list; regrets that the control system in place did not prevent nor detect those mistakes; calls on Parliament to implement the necessary changesexplain how these mistakes arose and measures taken to correct them and to ensure that they cannot happen again in the future and to ensure that it only pays daily allowances to Members who qualify for them by the end of 2022 and to inform Parliament’s Budget Control Committee when those changes will enter into force;
Amendment 7 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 12
Paragraph 12
12. Emphasises that the Court examined more in particular the EU Institutions’ public procurement procedures for the purchase of personal protective equipment for their members of staff in 2020; notes that the Court checked three procurement procedures organised by Parliament to purchase protective masks, temperature detectors and COVID-19 tests; stressunderlines that the urgent procurement of equipment in the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic was challenging due to surging demand and competition between contracting authorities and countries; notes that the Court, in one case related to the purchase of fabric masks, found that the requirements set by Parliament in the tender specifications were too broad to allow assessment of compliance, and that the successful bidders did not include full evidence in their offer that all minimum quality requirements were met at the time of contracting, such as evidence related to compliance with technical specifications or to the durability of masks; highlights that the offers were accepted nonetheless; acknowledges that the urgent procurement of equipment in the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic was challenging due to surging demand and competition between contracting authorities and countries;
Amendment 14 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 19
Paragraph 19
19. Expresses its cNotes that oncern that decisionse plenary callings for different rules or measures to be implemented by Parliament, passed by the Plenary, are not taken up by the Bureau; expresses its strong view that all discharge decisions passed by the Plenary should be thoroughly followsuch proposed rules or measures are discussed and voted upon by both the Bureau,; pursuant to Rule 25 of and Annex V to the Rules of Procedure and Article 6 and 166 of the Financial Regulation, as well as by Parliament’s administration;
Amendment 18 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 22
Paragraph 22
22. Notes with concern that the minutes of the Bureau are often published with months of delay; recalls that minutes of Bureau meetings, once approved by the Bureau, should be made accessible without delay on both Parliament’s intranet and internet site; aAsks the administration to consider approving Bureau minutes in written procedure to prevent a de facto delay of publication of at least one month until the Bureau reconvenes to approve the minutes, and once adopted for the minutes to be made accessible without delay on both Parliament’s intranet and internet site;
Amendment 26 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 26
Paragraph 26
26. WelcomNotes the fact that Strasbourg part-sessions were suspended for the most part in the year 2020 and that digitalised processes included the organisation of remote meetings and remote voting systems in plenary and parliamentary committees, allowing the Parliament to continue its work; calls on the President of the Parliament to allow for athe option of remote participation of Members until the COVID- 19 pandemic is brought to safe levels;
Amendment 28 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 28
Paragraph 28
28. Stresses the serious risks of hearing problems as a result of extended working arrangements for Parliament’s interpreters having to rely on often very poor sound coming from remote-mode interventions; underlines the efforts made by the interpreters in that regard and calls on the Bureau to ensure that thea good sound quality on the remote participation tool fulfils all relevant ISO standards without any further delay and, if necessary, make the use of adequate hearing and speaking equipment a precondition for participants’ contributions in meetings to be interpreted; calls on Members to use the professional microphones issued by the Parliament;
Amendment 32 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 29
Paragraph 29
29. Regretcalls that voting remotely is currently not provided for under Parliament’s Rules of Procedure unless the President establishes the existence of extraordinary circumstances;
Amendment 37 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 31
Paragraph 31
31. Welcomes Parliament’s efforts, and particularly the personal engagement of former President Sassoli in this issue, to provide daily solidarity meals and shelters for vulnerable women in the three places of work, as decided by the Bureau; further welcomes the fact that around 65 drivers volunteered to drive doctors, nurses and other medical staff to their night shifts in hospital in the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic;
Amendment 39 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 32
Paragraph 32
32. Welcomes that Parliament distributed reusable facial fabric masks to members of staff at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic; notes that FFP2/3 masks have subsequently been proven to provide a much higher protection from SARS-CoV-2; regrets that there is no general requirement to date to wear FFP 2/3 masks on Parliament’s premises;
Amendment 41 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 33
Paragraph 33
33. Stresses that Parliament needs to be at the forefront of adopting more digital, flexible and energy-efficient working methods and meeting practices, learning from the experiences of the COVID-19 pandemic and capitalising on the technology investments already implemented which contribute to a significantly reduced need for office space, electricity, water consumption and emissions due to less daily commuting, while also balancing the advantages of in- person work in Parliament;
Amendment 55 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 41
Paragraph 41
41. Recalls that nearly two thirds of Parliament’s carbon footprint originates from the transport of people; calls for reflection on the expansion of voluntary teleworking to more days and functions; calls for a preference to be given to hybrid or fully remote events and meetings, including for the provision of interpretation and for remote interpretation whenever possible; calls for a revision of mission rules by the end of 2022 to ensure a proper needs- based approval and a specific justification for authorisation for all missions, including requirements for low carbon transport modealso calls to prioritise low carbon transport modes for missions;
Amendment 57 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 43
Paragraph 43
43. Calls for an appropriate increase in the number of car parking spaces reserved exclusively for electric vehicles; calls on Parliament to set up an incentive scheme covering the full price of an annual Brussels public transport ticket for all staff in return for their car parking vignette, followed by a reassessment of the overall number of parking spaces needed and the use of unused car parking to be turned into additional bicycle parking spacefor the creation of additional bicycle parking spaces; calls for the creation of adequate cargo bike parking spaces to ensure the regular bike parking spaces are accessible for regular bike riders;
Amendment 59 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 45
Paragraph 45
45. Welcomes the introduction of a wider and more sustainable food choice, including the introduction of a greater variety of vegetarian and vegan products, in Parliament’s canteens; reiterates that plant-based food not only has health advantages but also has a much lower carbon footprint; calls on Parliament to increase the variety of vegetarian and vegan meals further and incentivise the consumption of such meals with a view to reducing the consumption of meat, fish and other animal-based products in Parliament’s canteens as much as possible;
Amendment 64 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 46
Paragraph 46
46. Recalls the support by the vast majority of Parliament for a single seat to ensure efficient spending of Union taxpayers’ money and to assume its institutional responsibility to reduce its carbon footprint; recalls that Parliament’s plenary has previously requested a debate on its right to determine its own working arrangements and committed itself to initiating an ordinary treaty revision procedure under Article 48 ofat according to the Treaty on the European Union with a view to proposing changes necessary to the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union and Protocol 6 to allow it to decide on the location of its seat and its internal organisation4 ; _________________ 4Report A7-0350/2013 available at https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/doc ument/A-7-2013-0350_EN.pdf, Strasbourg is the seat of Parliament;
Amendment 67 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 48
Paragraph 48
48. Welcomes that ethical and transparency standards applicable to Parliament are in many respects ahead of those applicable in the Member State equivalents; regrets, however, that these are often not enforced in a satisfactory manner; considers that Parliament should strive to lead by example with regards to setting Europe-wide ethics and transparency standards; recalls that a lack of transparency, weak ethics rules and a lack of enforcement have the potential to compromise the integrity of the institution, lead to reputational risks for the Parliament as a whole and ultimately damage citizens’ trust in the institution; emphasises the importance of addressing potential reputational risks before they materialise;
Amendment 76 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 53
Paragraph 53
53. Reiterates that Article 4 of the Code of Conduct provides, with respect to financial interests and conflicts of interest, that the Members’ declarations of financial interests shall be provided in a detailed manner; regrets that according to a recent study from Transparency International EU, around 15% of Members with additional incomes have included vague or generic job descriptions in their declarations5 ; notes that in such cases it is questionable whether the activity can be checked for any potential conflict of interest with parliamentary activity; further regrets that Parliament’s services are instructed to only carry out general plausibility checks; repeats its call on the Bureau to review the format of the declarations to require more detail and thus clarity; asks the President to instruct the services to systematically carry out thorough checks of the declarations to ensure that the information provided therein is sufficiently detailed to allow for an assessment of any potential conflict of interest; _________________ 5https://transparency.eu/burning-candle- mep-income/
Amendment 79 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 55
Paragraph 55
Amendment 85 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 56
Paragraph 56
56. Strongly supports Parliament’s services’ ongoing project to make plenary voting records available on a dedicated space where users will have access to clear and reader-friendly documents, and welcomes the new layout for the roll-call votes in which the individual voting record of each Member will be published, giving the option to visualise the distribution of votes according to inter alia political group affiliation and/or nationality; regrets that it is not yet technically possible for Parliament’s services to allow for the display of the text of each amendment along with the voting record as it is offered by several private providers; calls on Parliamentary services to make available all amendments and roll-call voting records at committee level and to include them in the new layout; further asks Parliament’s services to provide the possibility to Members to test a beta version of the new tool and provide feedback to be taken into account during the development of the tool;
Amendment 96 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 59
Paragraph 59
59. Recalls that pursuant to Rule 11(4) of Parliament’s Rules of Procedure, Parliament provides Members already with the possibility of publishing a voluntary audit or confirmation of their GEAgeneral expenditure allowance expenses; regretnotes that only five voluntary declarations on the use of the GEAgeneral expenditure allowance were submitted during the calendar year 2020; calls on Parliament’s services to send an annual reminder to Members in relation to this possibility;
Amendment 111 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 66
Paragraph 66
66. Notes that creating the permanent possibility for members of staff to telework from anywhere, under conditions to be specified, entails a great number of advantages for both members of staff and institutions including the improvement of staff well-being and increasing Parliament’s attractiveness as an employer, financial savings made through, inter alia, a reduced need for office space, a reduced environmental impact from staff commutes and a closer link between the Union institutions and citizens in Member States other than Belgium, France and Luxembourg; calls on Parliament to enter into an inter-institutional discussion with a view to reviewing the decision obliging staff to telework exclusively from their place of employment in exceptional circumstances, e.g. under the condition of temporarily forfeiting their expat allowance;
Amendment 117 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 69 a (new)
Paragraph 69 a (new)
69 a. Proposes that, in line with the fact that promoting equal opportunities remains a key component of Parliament's human resource management policy, a greater focus is placed on equal opportunities for all, notably for example increasing the number of people with disabilities working in the Parliament administration; notes that within the Bureau a high-level group on gender and diversity already exists and requests that it conduct a study of effective measures taken in Member States and internationally to increase the participation of people with disabilities in the work place, including legislative measures; requests that the high-level group reports back to the Bureau with concrete suggestions once the study has been undertaken and the results analysed; calls for ambitious targets to be urgently set and for them to be achieved over a short time frame;
Amendment 118 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 69 a (new)
Paragraph 69 a (new)
69 a. Reiterates its call to the Secretary- General to insist on the importance of all recruitment being based on competency, while also respecting the need for geographical balance of all Member States at all levels of staff; calls for a geographical balance to be reached to ensure a proper representation of nationals from all Member States, including at management level;
Amendment 122 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 70
Paragraph 70
70. Regrets that sometimes political, rather than purely competency criteria seem to determincan influence the outcome the internal “passerelle” competitions; calls on Parliament to ensure in future competitions that candidates are chosen based on skills and competence rather than political affiliation;
Amendment 124 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 71
Paragraph 71
71. Notes that 17 new harassment cases were opened in 2020; stresses that efforts still need to be made to ensure thathighlights the importance of the two advisory committees dealing with harassment complaints concerning Members and all members of staff gain more trust from victims of harassment, who may fear that their career or position in Parliament would be at stake if they go through the whole harassment procedure, ga; underlines the importance of victims trusting the members of these advisory committees; welcomes the voluntary anti-harassment training offered to Members and asks Parliament to regularly remind Members about ther evidxistence and build their caseutility of this training;
Amendment 126 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 72
Paragraph 72
72. Calls on Parliament to monitor if several cases of long-term sick leave are requested by members of staff in the same unit or APAs working for the same Member and actively reach out to the concerned persons to inform them of the support provided by Parliament and the possibility to make a formal complaint in the case of harassment at work; further calls on Parliament to ensure that reimbursement procedures for psychological treatment in this regardfor any victim of harassment are not overly bureaucratic and are processed quickly;
Amendment 130 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 74
Paragraph 74
74. Notes that neither an inspection of the national service 'Contrôle des lois sociales/Direction de Bruxelles' (2020) nor an analysis by the psychosocial department of the external service for prevention and protection at work in Brussels (2020) found any legal breaches related to social laws and working conditions for cleaning staff; supports the launch of internal surveys, by the end of 2021, aiming to reflect the actual state of the company’s employee satisfaction levels, engagement, commitment, loyalty, motivation, etc. and to identify weaknesses, problems or opportunities for improvement within the current cleaning company Köse; calls on Parliament to take all necessary precautions to ensure that the highest standards of labour law for cleaning staff, are being upheld by external contractors, in particular as regards psychological pressure and working conditions;
Amendment 143 #
Amendment 147 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 84
Paragraph 84
84. Highlights that, in Brussels, some buildings either currently occupied by Parliament or of major strategic interest due to their location and the related security aspects, are not Parliament's property, as was the case with the SCHOLL building before it was acquired by Parliament; notes that Parliament's Building Strategy Beyond 2019 underlines the importance of owning and interconnecting Parliament’s central buildings and mentions TREVES II as a building that is in Parliament’s interest to acquire; notes that while these criteria are important, they should not be the ultima ratio for the purchase of a new building and cannot justify the purchase of additional office space at a price that lies significantly above market value;
Amendment 153 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 85
Paragraph 85
Amendment 156 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 85 a (new)
Paragraph 85 a (new)
85 a. Recalls that there is a standing rapporteur in the Committee on Budgets, which is competent for buildings within Parliament;
Amendment 160 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 86
Paragraph 86
86. Takes note of the decision of the Bureau of 23 October 2019 to approve the creation of an IDEA Lab in 2020 with the aim of testing new, innovative solutions in the context of offices and facility management; notes that the decision of the Bureau was not based on any specific cost estimate; further notes that as part of the IDEA Lab, one Member’s office, at a cost of EUR 486. 012 EUR, and adjacent showroom, at a cost of at least EUR 203. 978 Euro, were built and equipped over the course of 2020; considers the testing of innovative office and facility management solutions useful in general but strongly rejects that the extensive costs incurred in this case are justifiable to taxpayers; further raises a strong concern about the fact that the renovated office space is now occupied by the Chair of the Bureau’s Building Working Group responsible for the projectconsiders that the costs need to remain reasonable and justifiable;
Amendment 190 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 95
Paragraph 95
95. Regrets thatcalls that the 2017 Parliament discharge resolution called for the Secretary-General has not yeto come forward with any findings in response to the investigation into the legal foundations of the scheme as called for in the 2017 Discharge Resolution; underlines that this investigation should be carried out by an independent party;