Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2002-10-09-Speech-3-154"
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"en.20021009.11.3-154"2
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".
Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, it is a fact – perhaps an agreeable fact at this hour of the day – that I am able today to present to you a draft report that has been unanimously adopted by the Committee on Budgetary Control. I take great pleasure in the fact that we expressly welcome the Commission's ideas relating to the fraud-proofing of legislation and contract management. It is always cheaper to avoid or prevent fraud than it is to attempt, after the event and at great expense, to put things right. I would like to bring up a couple of other items that we would like to see reinforced.
Firstly, fraud-proofing must not be allowed to unduly prolong the preparation of European legislation, nor must it be limited exclusively to new draft laws. On the contrary, existing legislation must also be checked for flaws. I believe it to be also a credibility issue that we should, in tandem with this draft law from the Commission, start to scrutinise policies that we know, Commissioner, to be an invitation to fraud – the examples that come to my mind include export refunds in the area of agriculture.
Secondly, we have to hold fast to the primary purpose of the anti-fraud office, OLAF, which is, of course, to combat fraud and corruption and not to do the things proposed here. We are prepared, however, within the framework of the 2003 work programme, to examine whether OLAF has sufficient human and financial resources at its disposal to effectively perform the duties transferred to it. Here too we have to discuss whether we can transfer an increasing number of tasks to this Office. We have had to note a cut in its budget for the coming year. Parliament is trying to get matters back in some sort of order, but this is not just about the Budget; it is quite simply about the fact that we know that one of the reasons for the failure of OLAF's predecessor, UCLAF, was that it did everything and therefore managed nothing. The main focus here, then, must be on the essentials.
It is our view that standard contracts and agreements should be drawn up and collected centrally, and that this would make it easier to track and monitor parties to contracts and transactions under them. We take the view that a clause should be incorporated into the contracts and agreements to exclude from the award of future contracts those partners guilty of any fraudulent act. Here too we urge the Commission to give priority to more consistent application of the options that are already available. It is a tragedy, for example, when EUROSTAT repeatedly points out that firms cannot be got rid of even when it is proven that they gave false information as early as the stage of putting out to tender. Where does that get us? That is surely a credibility issue! The combating of fraud is essentially a credibility issue, and credibility is something the Commission has yet to provide in various areas.
To repeat, we are very satisfied with what the Commission has submitted here. What really will make a difference is how it is implemented. What will matter, in the final analysis, is how seriously and with what transparency we want to remove the flaws from our own legislation. I would like to tell the Commissioner without any equivocation that, on this issue, we in Parliament are standing alongside the Commission, but we need openness, and, when it comes down to it, we also need transparency, if we are to be able to work together on these problems."@en1
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