Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-07-04-Speech-2-034"
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"en.20000704.2.2-034"2
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"Mr President, I am going to confine my comments to the general Commission discharge for 1998, which has taken on a highly political and divisive tone right from the start of our discussions.
I feel that we have been through several rounds of a boxing match but ultimately the whole committee, including the rapporteur, said that discharge should be granted. Rather than stick with the hysterical, drum-beating report that the rapporteur produced, which, if truth be told, had little originality, no sense of direction and no suggestion on how to move ahead constructively, the committee decided back in March to postpone the discharge and to set out seventeen clear conditions which we expected the Commission to sign up to in the space of a couple of months. We were delighted that the rapporteur saw the error of her ways and supported our way of thinking. Round one to us, the anti-PPE alliance.
The rapporteur then tried a fast left hook with her headline-grabbing explanatory statement. She lost. Round two to the anti-PPE alliance. The Commission responded constructively to most of the points we set out in March. The next Stauner report was in the same hysterical tone as the first round but this time we were ready for her. Round three to the anti-PPE alliance. We thought the fight was over, but no, we were in for more with the new explanatory statement. We have yet to see the result of that round but we are confident about the final knock-out round and we confidently predict what will happen on Thursday.
The only real question that remains is why her name is still on the report. The truth is, we know that the Commission has a long way to go in getting its act together. The Court of Auditors was right in not giving its O.K. to the Commission expenditure in 1998, but we are willing now to give the Commission the benefit of the doubt. We think that this is a genuine attempt at reform and the Commission needs a certain amount of time to implement the necessary changes. We will keep an eye on the situation and make sure the Commission sticks to the promises it has made. For example, the promise to cut the number of errors is a major promise but it will not happen unless we have the commitment and the resources to go with it.
Commissioner, can you assure us that particularly in the areas of high risk, agriculture, structural funds and research, we will see more checks rather than fewer, as happened in 1998? Will we see significantly more resources for auditing within the DGs in cooperation with the internal audit service? Can you give us these figures, please?
You know, Commissioner, that one area where we were dissatisfied with your answers was in response to lessons learned from Fléchard. We know from the Court of Auditors, unlike Mrs Stauner, that we cannot get the money back. Will you make a commitment though to cooperate fully with our internal inquiry committee and give us the information we request?
Finally, I hope that in our committee, we will be able to stop fighting each other and get on with fighting fraud."@en1
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