Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-12-04-Speech-4-009"
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"en.20031204.1.4-009"2
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"Mr President, I too should like to express my gratitude to the Court of Auditors for drawing up the annual report, which I have, as always, read with great interest.
We are now on the eve of new elections, and I can only look back on the debate which we had here four or five years ago when we were in the heat of the discussion about the financial difficulties that the Santer Commission was having at the time. I promised the electorate then that financial control in the new European Commission would be considerably enhanced. We are now four years down the line and what strikes us most of all is that – even after nine years of working on Statements of Assurance – the Court of Auditors has still not managed to issue a positive Statement of Assurance. That is quite clear to every citizen in Europe and the lack of success in this respect is very regrettable. This is offset by the fact that the Court of Auditors has concluded that the Commission is on the right track and if I may quote the President: 'The reform plan is concrete and coherent and must be supported'. Things are therefore moving in the right direction, but the big question is that of how much longer we can wait – particularly as enlargement is imminent and it will be extremely difficult to tell those countries what to do if we ourselves are not even able to implement this in our old Member States. That is, in my view, the crucial discussion. It has been said before, the main centre of gravity lies with the Member States themselves, but it is always the Commission that is responsible.
At the beginning of this year, the Group of the European Liberal, Democrat and Reform Party took an initiative proposal for agricultural expenditure, which is this year once again meeting with strong criticism. This proposal stated that if it is the case that a Member State continues to mismanage agricultural funds, the Commission should stop making advance payments to those Member States. That worked in our opinion. That report has received unanimous support by Parliament and, according to Mr Fischler, it has also been supported by the Commission. In response to a written question from me, the Member States have rejected it. What instruments of power are left to this Parliament?
Finally, even after this report, we do not know how much things have changed for the better or for the worse. According to the Court of Auditors, things are improving. The word 'indicators' is being bandied about. Is it possible to develop indicators? The Court of Auditors has said that they are unable to do this, but that the Directors-General should do this. Is the Commission thinking about starting with this? Can we say that things are improving every year by a certain percentage, until such time as 100% may be reached at some stage, sooner – it is to be hoped – rather than later?"@en1
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