Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/1999-10-25-Speech-1-044"
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"en.19991025.3.1-044"2
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"Madam President, the best way of combating fraud is not to appoint more inspectors but to implement, in our own Parliament too, a policy of complete openness about subsidies and administration. It is the present culture of secrecy which is the fraudsters’ best defence. All administration and all subsidies are nowadays dealt with by computer. It is a very simple matter to give our citizens access to the information on the Internet. Everyone can see, at the library or on their own computer, who has received what amount and for what purpose. If a company or an association wants there to be confidentiality about any subsidies it receives, then it is free to use its own resources to ensure this. If a company, a municipality or a Member of this Parliament wants a subsidy from myself and other European taxpayers, I want to know what I am supporting. I ask that funds should be seen as being entrusted to our care and that they should not, en route to their recipients, be wasted or siphoned off by fraudsters. But no matter how many people we appoint to OLAF, fraud is, at best, only going to be slightly reduced. We need to go to the root of the problem if we want to stamp out fraud.
The first prerequisite for doing this is a radical reduction in the number of projects and subsidy schemes the EU operates. Brussels ought only to be granting subsidies to cross-frontier projects or in cases where each country is too small to be able to carry out the projects concerned on its own. It should not be the EU’s job to decide if taxpayers’ funds are to go to a church in Christiansfeld or a golf course in North Jutland. Prioritising of this kind can be done much better by Danish voters and politicians. Nor should it be the EU’s job to decide whether motorways or schools are to be built in Alentejo with the help of EU subsidies. We can safely leave those decisions to Portuguese voters and their representatives. Funds are more efficiently transferred to poor Member States from the rich countries in the north by reducing or completely doing away with the contributions paid by poor countries to the EU. At present, EU subsidies mean more often than not that poor people in rich countries are taxed for the benefit of rich people in poor countries. None of us ourselves want to pursue a policy of wealth distribution of this kind, but this is happening nonetheless because of the EU’s numerous systems for granting subsidies. For example, 20% of farmers receive 80% of subsidies. We ought instead to make all subsidy schemes transparent. Our citizens will then ensure that they are done away with. The newspapers will write about the absurdities entailed. And then the voters and the various organisations will get involved. In this way, living democracy will ensure that incentives to fraud are abolished and that the fraud which does go on is revealed. To combat any remaining fraud, it is a splendid idea for the police authorities in the Member States to cooperate with each other. On the other hand, we have no need for a Corpus Juris, a common prosecution service, penal legislation and a European answer to the FBI. These things are aimed not at reducing crime but only at creating a new state and developing a more intrusive European Union.
I totally agree with Mrs Maes that complete openness about subsidies and subsidy schemes will make the job easier for OLAF’s new director. So who is this to be? My group proposes that we do not turn the decision into an election battle between left and right. We ought instead to unite around the best qualified candidate and be content with nominating him or her for the job. For years, the Council has approved faulty accounts and so disqualified itself from finding the right candidate. The Commission has positively concealed fraud and so shown the need for an independent director of OLAF. As the situation stands, a unanimous nomination from the European Parliament is therefore the best solution, and my group sincerely hopes that we can find a director for OLAF who will take decisions to prevent any fraud in future. And because, Madam President, Parliament must clearly abide by the same rules, I too am voting for the agreement."@en1
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