Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-01-18-Speech-2-305"
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"en.20000118.10.2-305"2
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"Mr President, the Santer Commission came to grief because financial control failed all down the line. Therefore, the future of this new Commission will depend in no small measure on the extent to which reforms are swiftly undertaken here and financial control is back in working order.
As far as this is concerned, a number of people have already referred to the fact that the Commission intends to drastically improve and consolidate its follow-up checks and that these checks should be carried out on a completely independent basis, with no sweeping of matters under the carpet in future. Naturally, this is only to be welcomed.
What I do not understand is why this has to come at a price, as it were, that is, of having to dispense with independent – and I stress, independent – prior approval. Up until now, the Commission’s payments could only be made when the authorising officer signed the appropriate order and the financial controller gave his approval in the form of a visa. And so it is the “two key” principle that applies here. A single key is to suffice in future. The financial controller is no longer to make advance checks, if all goes to plan as regards the reforms currently under discussion within the Commission. If you will pardon me for saying so, Mr Kinnock, what you are proposing is a little like abolishing the police because they were unable to prevent crimes.
What we really need to focus on, however, is making the checks more effective. This could be achieved by no longer insisting, in future, that the financial controllers furnish every single payment transaction with their approval stamp. It is precisely those who feel the need to control everything that end up controlling nothing at all. Therefore, in future, prior approval should take place in a targeted manner, that is, only in cases of uncertainty or risk. The officials responsible for financial control should be deployed on a decentralised basis, that is, in the operational Directorates-General, amongst those of their colleagues that spend the money, so that they are immediately available when problems arise and so as to render the checks less ponderous and time-consuming.
However, the financial controllers must work independently. That is the crucial difference between our plans and those of the Commission, when it talks in terms of decentralisation. It is obviously the Commission’s intention to make the financial control officials subordinate to the individual Directorates-General, but this is precisely what we do not want. Surely we have learnt this much from the events surrounding the Leonardo affair, when the internal examiners in the relevant Directorate-General issued warnings, but these were neither heeded nor passed on.
Therefore, independence is prerequisite for effective checks. That is the position which a clear majority of the Committee on Budgetary Control subscribes to. Indeed, the new Commission has now declared itself in favour of follow-up checks having this independence, and so would it not make sense for a system of prior approval to enjoy such independence as well?
I believe we should set the seal on this point at tomorrow’s vote. Mrs Theato has already expressed as much and I am only too willing to support her in this regard."@en1
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