Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-05-16-Speech-2-043"
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"en.20000516.4.2-043"2
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"Mr President, allow me to start with a few comments on the judgement of the Court of First Instance of 2 May on the rights and duties of the members of this House vis-à-vis OLAF. I welcome this judgement. It clarifies that, as elected representatives of the people, we may rightly claim a special status and that, in the event of doubt, protecting our independence takes precedence. That was my position from the outset, incidentally. That was why, during negotiations with the Commission and the Council, we made all the sensitive passages in the OLAF regulation subject to the Protocol on Privileges and Immunities. That was why we suggested last autumn in the Committee on Budgetary Control that the provisions for members should be kept separate from the provisions for officials. Unfortunately, the Committee on Constitutional Affairs did not subscribe to this view. I said from the outset that members’ offices were off limits for OLAF.
What is wrong with the present disciplinary procedures is that, of necessity, they lead to huge conflicts of interest. In the case of senior officials, the College of Commissioners decides whether or not disciplinary proceedings should be instituted and it is the Commission which passes the final judgement, at the proposal of a disciplinary board on which senior officials have to advise on the fate of senior officials, i.e. colleagues sit in judgement on colleagues. That cannot work and it does not work. As long as this system is maintained, the accusation will be made time and again, rightly or wrongly, that proceedings are open to manipulation. Nor will this change once the disciplinary board becomes an interinstitutional board, i.e. a board of officials from various institutions. It will only change if the Commission takes up the proposal of real externalisation, as agreed by the House in the vote on the Hulten report on 19 January, in which Parliament called for disciplinary proceedings in the case of infringements of the Financial Regulation to be referred to an external chamber of the Court of Justice or the Court of Auditors so that proceedings are objective and fair beyond doubt.
We even stipulated in this report that the Chamber should form part of the Court of Auditors, with the Court of Justice sitting in appeal. The report also includes a number of points from the White Paper on the reform of the Commission in connection with OLAF. And yet I have just heard from some quarters that we should postpone a decision on these points and not take a stand on them just yet. Except that the Commission wants to implement all the points addressed here before the summer recess. If we do not take a stand on them now, then we can spare ourselves the trouble altogether.
One last word to Mrs Schreyer: I know from conversations last week with the members of the OLAF Supervisory Committee that the recruitment and appointment procedures for OLAF are proceeding too slowly. Clearly one reason for this is that the Commission is obviously proving to be too inflexible, despite the fact that, on paper, it has transferred full powers to the director of OLAF in a decision in due and proper form. I can only urge you to stand by your own decisions and not create difficulties where none exists.
Obviously, the Commission’s legal service took a different view. Now it has been taught a lesson by the Court. However, the court judgement has put us in a position of inequality, because only the plaintiff can cite this judgement. This state of affairs may last for a ridiculous amount of time, perhaps until a judgement is returned on the main issue, which may not be for two years. I have therefore taken recourse to Rule 181 of the Rules of Procedure and proposed an amendment to the Rules of Procedure.
The text which I have proposed is in line with the original proposal of the Committee on Budgetary Control. It keeps to the letter of the interinstitutional agreement with the Commission and the Council and takes full account of the stipulations of the Court of First Instance. I urge you to support this initiative to amend the Rules of Procedure. It would allow the matter to be clarified as quickly as possible and, I think, would even allow the members who took recourse to the Court to withdraw their action. If the proposed amendment to the Rules of Procedure is implemented, their action would, as a matter of course, be pointless anyway. This too is perfectly clear from the Court’s judgement. Parliament’s internal decision was out of order, but the Parliament and Council regulation of 25 May 1999 on the work of OLAF is here to stay and is not open to question.
This is why I fail to comprehend why a number of proposed amendments to my report claim that the Court’s judgement has strengthened the position of the European Investment Bank and the European Central Bank in their opposition to the regulation. It is true that both banks maintain that the Parliament and Council regulation cannot under any circumstances be applied to them because this would encroach upon their independence. I totally fail to understand that; we have no intention of interfering in the banks’ work. What we do want is to guarantee that they have a minimum degree of protection against fraud, or do they want us to end up using private detectives to carry out this work?
The European Court of Justice and the Court of Auditors have duly implemented the provisions of the OLAF regulation in corresponding internal decisions. They certainly would not have done so if they had felt that their independence was being jeopardised. Neither bank has a plausible explanation as to why they do not accept what the independent judges of the European Court of Justice have accepted.
Three points on the content of my report. Point number 1 concerns OLAF as an investigation unit which identifies and investigates suspicious cases quickly and efficiently. The legal basis for this is in place. Together with the Council, we have done everything within our power. The development of OLAF is well under way.
Point number 2 concerns the European financial public prosecutor who, in the initial stage, has the right to support the national courts in prosecuting criminal offences committed by officials or employees of the Union.
Point number 3 concerns really effective disciplinary procedures. The Staff Regulations and Financial Regulation have long made provision for the competent decision-makers to pay for damage for which they are responsible out of their own pocket in cases of gross negligence or intent. This provision has never been applied. The Commission is planning even now to delete it from the Financial Regulation. That would be precisely the wrong signal. We urge the Commission to reconsider such a move."@en1
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