Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-04-08-Speech-2-026"
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"en.20030408.1.2-026"2
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"Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, we are speaking here about a period of reform and how it should be assessed. That period is of course still under way and we are therefore also justified in again giving the Commission a few laurels in advance.
If we are transferring thousands of millions of euros back to the Member States because we are not able to implement certain programmes, that does not mean we are being particularly frugal, but quite simply that we are failing to implement policies on which we have agreed. This is not, though, only about the Member States, Commissioner; if environmental protection organisations have their support status removed from one year to the next – more or less wilfully – that also has something to do with under-implementation of the European Budget. If project applicants have to wait years to get the money from the European taxpayer, that, too, has nothing to do with economy or good management.
Commissioner, you raised the issue of Eurostat. That is not about OLAF; OLAF is known to have informed the Commission. If, though, the Secretary-General of the Commission does not know where Mr Solbes Mira’s office is, that is a problem of the Commission’s internal reform. You will have to keep an eye on that in the next few years. OLAF is doing its work very well here. There have already been two cases reported to Luxembourg. We only have to insist that Luxembourg fulfils its obligations, follows up notifications involving the protection of European taxpayers and in the end brings charges.
There is PerryLux – a most deplorable case, one that is already a few years old, and about which Luxembourg has still not done anything. I would really like to call on Luxembourg from here to take the protection of European taxpayers’ interests more seriously than it has done in the past. We cannot have a situation where they benefit from having thousands of European Union officials based in Luxembourg but evade responsibility when it comes to safeguarding European taxpayers’ interests.
We have mentioned a point – this is something I want to say to Mr Blak – about the agencies. Do you know what super users are? We are back with the reform here, Commissioner. They are people who enable one and the same person to perform the tasks of resource manager, authorising officer, financial controller and accounting officer. Anyone here who has anything to do with auditing knows that this naturally throws the doors wide open to the abuse of funds. We have such things in our agencies. It must be stopped. Mr Blak was absolutely right to raise it in his reports. I would like to urge everyone here today, if we find that again next year, to take a negative stance to the discharge of such agencies.
One last point. We have decided to postpone discharge for the Committee on the Regions. The latest news we have received from the Committee on the Regions confirms this course. It is inconceivable that an attempt is now clearly being made to punish the bearer of those ill tidings, the financial controller, for what has happened here. That is not the way. Other speakers will be saying more about it. I can only warn the Committee on the Regions and its Secretary-General not to continue the way they are going, because we will not hesitate to draw the logical conclusions."@en1
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