Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-03-13-Speech-2-211"
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"en.20010313.14.2-211"2
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"Mr President, so many words have been spoken in praise of Mr Bösch that it is hard to know what to say. I think he knows how highly I rate his work. I would therefore like to comment on a few points that have been mentioned in the debate.
The first point is that we welcome the fact that the OLAF report on the Fléchard case was submitted last week, something that has not yet been mentioned. This is a positive point that should be take into account in further discussions. This report does not establish or seek to establish what the European Parliament's view on this case is. That is part of the budget discharge process, which will be on our agenda in a month's time.
Nevertheless, I would like to take this opportunity to give the Commission some sound advice. It would certainly be very helpful for the discussions on the budget discharge if the Commission could reconsider the views it has already expressed on this case, and take advantage, for example, of the opportunity presented to it next week by the meeting of the Committee on Budgetary Control. That could certainly assist the subsequent deliberations in the context of the budget discharge process.
There are also two other points in some way connected with misunderstandings. Mr Mulder mentioned one misunderstanding, and I think Mr Seppänen's speech was a case in point: there is some confusion between irregularities and fraud. We must make it clear in this report, on the basis of the amendment tabled by Mr Bösch himself and supplemented by Mr Mulder's amendment, that we do not want to see these categories being muddled up. I would like to clarify this in the light of one particular example: Mr Seppänen's speech. In it, he literally referred to the Fléchard case as an irregularity, and then connected it with the Court of Auditors' failure to give a positive statement of assurance concerning the Commission's budget management. If we do this we are mixing things up and run the risk of giving our visitors in the public gallery the impression that even a bookkeeping error would be classified as fraud. No one can have any political interest in doing that. We must make sure that these two things are not confused.
The second possible misunderstanding is not a misunderstanding amongst ourselves, but rather a misunderstanding outside this Chamber, regarding the flax affair. As I understand it, the decision-making process in one Member State was described by the Committee on Budgetary Control as if responsibility had been shifted from national to regional level. On behalf of my group I would like to say that regardless of the internal organisation of the individual Member States, we want to ensure that responsibility towards the European Union at national level for the correct implementation of EU programmes is respected."@en1
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