Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-03-27-Speech-4-040"
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"en.20030327.2.4-040"2
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"Mr President, I should like to state that I find it quite unacceptable that fraud involving EU funds should amount to something like two billion a year and even be increasing in some areas. At the same time, it must however be acknowledged that this is basically a national problem in as much as approximately 80% of the EU budget is administered by the national authorities. I think that, in this area, the Member States display a fundamental unwillingness to take the necessary initiatives to deal specifically with fraud involving EU funds.
This is borne out by, for example, the Commission’s statement that, out of every four cases that are brought to light by OLAF and that should lead to the national authorities’ being prosecuted, only one has legal consequences.
I find all this unacceptable. It does not however lead me unconditionally to endorse Mrs Theato’s conclusion that the optimum and only solution lies in setting up another institution: a common European Prosecutor in the form of a body taking precedence over national legislation and demanding extensive harmonisation in areas in which the Member States traditionally have different legal traditions and legal concepts. I need only mention harmonisation of penal legislation, production of evidence, penalties and the rules governing legal processes.
If we were to implement this model here and now, I would anticipate major conflicts of authority between the common European Prosecutor and the national authorities, as well as some overlap in relation to other Community initiatives such as Eurojust, OLAF and Europol, initiatives that, in view of the short period of time they have been up and running, should at all events be given more time to produce results in areas including that of fraud involving EU funds.
That having been said, however, I do in actual fact support in principle the idea of setting up this authority and embedding it in the treaty. I just do not think that the time is ripe for such a drastic harmonisation of fundamental areas of legal policy, as proposed by Mrs Theato.
I believe instead that a European Prosecutor’s office should be developed gradually and within the framework of strengthened Eurojust cooperation. That is, moreover, the model mentioned by Mrs Theato in Article 22, Paragraph 2 of her report.
In general, it is these considerations that form the basis of the amendments to the report tabled by the Group of the European Liberal, Democrat and Reform Party."@en1
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