Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2002-09-24-Speech-2-157"
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"en.20020924.10.2-157"2
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"Thank you, Mr President. I have been a Member of the European Parliament for 23 years – the first 10 in the Committee on Budgets – and I am from time to time a member of the Committee on Budgetary Control. I was involved in putting Parliament’s house in order following its scandalous dealings with taxpayers’ money which have left us with the still unfinished business surrounding the issue of reimbursed travel expenses. I have read the annual reports by the Court of Auditors. I was involved in dismissing the last Commission, and I have always been very critical of the lack of transparency in the Commission. Not by any stretch of the imagination did I, however, at any time think that the Commission did its accounts on an Excel spreadsheet so that the figures could be adjusted without anyone’s knowing. If the owner of an ice-cream stall or hardware shop were to do his accounts in the same way, it would be unlawful and lead to legal action by the tax office. In this case, we are talking about the Commission, but the legal action is being taken against the person who revealed the accounts scandal. There is a desire to shoot the messenger for bringing bad news. The Spanish Chief Accountant, Mrs Andreasen, deserves a lot of praise for having given Parliament the information we should have received from the Commission. Mrs Andreasen initially went through the internal channels and passed her observations up the line to Mr Prodi, but to no avail so far as I understand. The Commission wanted her to sign off an account that half the Directors-General had signed only with reservations. Since 1994, the Court of Auditors has refused to vouch for the correctness of the underlying transactions. For eight years, therefore, my web site, bonde.com, has contained a letter from an office in the Court of Auditors to the Commission, and it is the most alarming letter I have read in my 30 years in the EU. The Commission’s current practice of accounting on spreadsheets lends itself to poor administration and fraud. Against that unfortunate background, SOS Democracy wishes to invite all adherents of ordinary accounting to meet Mrs Andreasen on Wednesday at 3 p.m. in conference room R3.1. We should together discuss how we can deal with what, to me, looks like the worst scandal in the EU’s history. Now, we know a little about how matters stand. From now on, we all share the responsibility. Thank you, Mr President and Mr Pedersen."@en1
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