Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-12-03-Speech-3-133"
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"en.20031203.10.3-133"2
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"Mr President, Commissioner, rapporteur, as we are reminded in Mr Bösch’s meticulous and exhaustive report, OLAF’s current director took office three and a half years ago. This body has grown so much that it now has 364 members of staff. The time for expectations, transitions and adjustment is, therefore, over. The time has definitely come for a balance sheet, for an evaluation and for accountability. The audit that has been planned for OLAF is crucial, as is moving from the current ‘Supervisory Committee’, which is simply a figurehead, to a monitoring, evaluation and decision-making body with ultimate authority. Our Committee on Budgetary Control has always viewed OLAF as a working instrument for a European Prosecution Service, an institution made increasingly necessary by the growth and sophistication of transnational European crime. The outcome of the current Intergovernmental Conference will consequently be crucial. We must ask ourselves whether, until OLAF is given the status of a European Prosecution Service, it makes sense to continue investing in police action that this organisation cannot legally pursue and instead employ auditing methods that are used in all financial crime-fighting and which no financial investigation body can do without.
Clearly contributing to OLAF’s poor performance in the recent Eurostat case was a lack of understanding of basic concepts of communication and information, and an imbalance between the interests in play. Another contributing factor was the lack of auditors, whose skills must always be at the heart of combating financial fraud or irregularities. This is a time for rigour, strictness, hard work, professionalism, balance, reason and common sense and this is precisely what we hope to see OLAF achieve."@en1
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