Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2004-01-28-Speech-3-150"
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"en.20040128.12.3-150"2
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"Mr President, I agree with Mr Kuhne, and in view of the late hour I, too, shall get straight to the point.
In contrast to the Committee of the Regions – the previous item on the agenda – we did grant the Commission discharge in April of last year. At that time, too, I was the spokesman for my group and was able to put our arguments forward. One of the arguments was that the Commission was on the right track to reform. We still believe that to be the case.
Scarcely had the ink dried on that resolution when the Eurostat affair erupted. That was no small matter. Eurostat is not just any old branch of the Commission. It produces extremely important statistics on the Stability and Growth Pact, on the contributions of the Member States, and, if things are not going well there, how reliable are the statistics themselves? Thus, it was not for nothing that many people became very worked up over these revelations. We think that, on the whole, the Commission has shown vigour in righting the wrongs at Eurostat. A number of problem areas remain, however, and, indeed, several people have already alluded to these.
First of all, how are we to deal with the role of OLAF? I always thought it strange to be told by the Secretary-General that OLAF had asked that we should keep things secret and not pass them on. I do not know many officials who are required to keep things of this nature secret for their political superiors; in not one administration does such a thing happen. Officials should keep their political superiors fully informed, and I think that that is clearly the lesson to be learnt from this affair.
What is essential as far as the Group of the European Liberal, Democrat and Reform Party is concerned is political accountability. The fact that a Commissioner does not know something cannot mean that he or she is not politically accountable. We have sought to raise this point in an amendment to the resolution, on which, indeed, we shall be voting tomorrow, and we also think that, when the hearings of the new Commissioners are held shortly – although it will depend on the new Parliament – we will have to question them on this point. After all, as far as we are concerned, this affair has shown President Prodi’s words at the start of his term about the individual accountability of Commissioners to be not entirely satisfactory. We hope that this will be raised at the new hearings, as I have said, because we must be able to declare to the European political elite, in particular, that someone in Europe is accountable for something."@en1
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