Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-01-18-Speech-2-074"
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"en.20000118.3.2-074"2
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"Mr President, for years, Parliament has called for specific and uniform protection under criminal law of the Union’s financial interests. Frustration inevitably sets in when we see the weakness of the Convention (and of the protocols relating to this protection) which, five years after being signed, has still not been ratified and has still not come into force.
On the other hand, more pro-active attempts, such as OLAF, which is currently operating, have not allayed legitimate concerns about the system of guarantees for individual rights. The proposals in Mrs Theato’s report seek to encourage the Commission to present a substantive legislative measure on the protection, under criminal law, of our financial interests, which would criminalise certain activity, specifically fraud against the Community budget. These proposals represent a serious attempt to establish a new and ever more urgently-needed uniform criminal law for the whole Community. At the same time they call for the existence of an independent body to coordinate and monitor the thoroughness of investigations by OLAF, without harming the administration of justice by each Member State and under the supervision of the European Court of Justice.
Finally, following on from what was agreed in Tampere, the report restates the need for a European Public Prosecutor. This issue has been brought once again to the fore by Commissioner Vitorino’s timely decision to ask the IGC to include in its agenda the creation of this new role, which everyone considers vital.
We should approve this report because it highlights the need to maintain efficient legal control over our institutions, by protecting the Union’s financial system with a substantive and procedural European law which is capable of maintaining the credibility of the Community’s economic life. Nevertheless, it raises some very basic questions. Is there currently a sufficient legal basis for justifying, in legal terms, the creation of a specifically Community-wide criminal law which, although it might be called subsidiary, will always clash with the practice, and in certain areas, with the traditional, separate criminal law of the Member States? As there are doubts, would it not be more advisable, from a political point of view, to put the reform of the legal system on the IGC agenda, and incorporate these proposals into the more general reform of the Union’s legal system along the lines of what is being requested for the European Public Prosecutor?
Surely these subjects will be of the greatest relevance to a revision of the treaties which will contribute to the stability of the area of freedom, security and justice?"@en1
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