Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-03-13-Speech-2-200"
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"en.20010313.14.2-200"2
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"Mr President, I would like to start by congratulating Mr Bösch: my group believes that, with him, this report is in capable hands. Despite this, we have still tabled a few amendments to his report. We remain adamant about the fact that this Parliament is not a court of law and that it does not need to pass judgment on certain cases. We must first wait and see what those reports bring and then judge whether the Commission has acquitted itself of its task expertly. That is why the jury is still out on the butter fraud, a case which is indeed probably very extensive, on the flax fraud in Spain and possibly in other countries too, on New Zealand butter and on Stockholm. We will wait for all the reports and will study the Commission’s behaviour in those situations, before passing judgment.
We endorse Mr Bösch’s observations with regard to OLAF’s role. The Director will need to avail himself of his rights and will, as far as we are concerned, be backed by Parliament. Independence is a great good. We also endorse the remarks about the European Public Prosecutor, although I must admit that a minority in my group feels differently about this. We believe that it is necessary, with a view to protecting financial interests, that the Commission table proposals along these lines as soon as possible, and we have quoted, in an amendment, 1 June 2001 as the ultimate deadline in this connection. Closer cooperation is obviously needed between the Commission, the Member States and the European and national courts of auditors. It is probably wise – and we have tabled an amendment to this effect as well – if the Commission were first to define what exactly is considered to be fraud and what is an irregularity. That discrepancy will need to be done away with. We can support Mr Bösch’s late amendment on Switzerland. Switzerland is a key country in Europe when it comes to combating fraud, and we do well to bear this in mind. It is unfortunate that the Swiss population feels so lukewarm about Europe, a fact which we will also need to take into consideration.
On a final note, we do not believe that Parliament should have unlimited access to all documents from OLAF. The nature of OLAF’s work is such that certain aspects must remain confidential and perhaps even secret."@en1
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