Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2004-03-29-Speech-1-080"
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"en.20040329.8.1-080"2
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"Mr President, Mr Bösch, ladies and gentlemen, from the very outset, it was a matter of fundamental concern to the Commission under President Prodi that the administration of Europe’s finances should undergo extensive reform and that they should be protected against fraud. The decisive action we have taken has achieved a great deal.
We now propose to amend the OLAF Regulation by improving the flow of information between OLAF and the Commission, by providing better procedural safeguards for those under investigation, and by giving a greater role to OLAF’s Supervisory Committee, to certain of whose functions you have just, again, referred. Alongside this, communications within the Commission on the subject of suspected fraud have been improved, notably between the political level and the services. These, too, had been brought to our attention by Parliament.
We – and by ‘we’ I mean Parliament too – have achieved a fundamental reform of the Financial Regulation. The new Financial Regulation not only reinforces budgetary principles, but also contains important instruments for combating fraud, and for exclusion of parties from tenders where details given by them are false. Very recently
has described this as exemplary. Administrative reform is largely complete. We have, in the shape of OLAF, an effective and powerful instrument for combating fraud, but we must, of course, be constantly working to improve it.
What we still need to do, though, is to set up a European Public Prosecutor’s Office; fraud that is detrimental to the European Budget must be punishable under criminal law. The Committee on Budgetary Control – particularly its chairman and the rapporteur, Mr Bösch – have been arguing in favour of this for years. Recently, we have joined together in campaigning – and very successfully too – for the Convention to incorporate in the draft Constitution the proposal for the establishment of a European Public Prosecutor’s Office to protect our financial interests. It is, fortunately, probable that an Intergovernmental Conference will, before the end of the Irish presidency’s six months, adopt a resolution on the draft Constitution. I would reiterate, though, that we have not yet got over all the hurdles, and I see it as absolutely necessary that all those who have worked towards the establishment of a European Public Prosecutor’s Office, should continue to be vigilant, lest it fall victim to some compromise or other. Right up to the Intergovernmental Conference, which will be in June, we will need to keep a very watchful eye on this.
In carrying out our reforms, we have been guided by the report produced by the Group of Wise Men, which your House appointed at the end of the previous Commission’s term of office. The clear apportionment of responsibility has been central. It is those who administer Europe’s funds who bear full responsibility for the proper handling of them. Centralised financial control has been done away with, a course of action that was long overdue. The division between financial control and policy management was a relic of a time when Europe still had a very small budget. Now, at last, we have the sort of structure that is taken for granted in the Member States, with individual ministries being responsible for the proper spending of their budgets. What happened in Eurostat during the nineties, with accounts being set up and administered outside the Budget, forcefully reminded everyone of the old system’s deficiencies. The Commission has, however, retained a central internal audit office, the importance of which was underlined when, as long ago as the summer of the year 2000, it was placed under the Vice-President of the Commission.
OLAF was established as an important and new anti-fraud body, intended to be fully independent in uncovering, by way of administrative investigations, fraud and irregularities within the institutions and in the external sphere. Where will you find the like of it in the Member States? In this, the European Union is ahead of the field, and it is of course encouraging that some of the new Member States are taking OLAF’s structure as a model.
As well as establishing and extending OLAF, the Commission has introduced a comprehensive and multidisciplinary approach to combating fraud; we have promoted the development of a culture of prevention not only by faultproofing legislation, but also by drawing up ethical standards for the Commission’s staff and detailed provisions to protect whistle-blowers. In combating fraud, we have stepped up operational cooperation with the Member States. What makes this essential is the fact that it is the Member States who administer some 80% of the expenditure from the Community budget. In this respect, OLAF is developing a true platform of services for the Member States.
The anti-fraud report for 2002 – which is what we are discussing today – shows that the Member States have made greater efforts to safeguard the EU’s finances than they did in the past. It was in 2002 that the Convention on the protection of the European Communities' financial interests at last entered into force. Even so, as Mr Bösch’s report shows, there is still more to be done.
As one would expect of him, Mr Bösch has produced a comprehensive report dealing with a whole range of issues related to fraud prevention, and from various angles. I would like to turn my attention to one aspect to which you, Mr Bösch, have just referred, and that is the issue of export refunds.
It is true to say that export refunds demand a high degree of vigilance, as it always involves more than one country, so it follows that this is an area in which monitoring must always be very consistent. According to the Directorate-General of my fellow-Commissioner Mr Fischler, though, the high volume of live cattle exported to Lebanon is also attributable to the steps that the European Union has taken to monitor the exports of live cattle in general. At the beginning of this decade, the main players left in this field were Lebanon and Egypt. During the BSE crisis, Egypt stopped importing live cattle from the European Union and instead started importing them from Australia. This explains the current high volume exported to Lebanon. I did of course ask whether the number of cattle exported there bore any relation to Lebanese consumer habits, and the DG Agriculture Policy again confirmed that these figures had of course to be considered in the light of the fact that the Lebanese eat practically no pigmeat and so it was only natural that more beef should be consumed than other varieties of meat.
I want to assure you, though, that I fully share your particular concerns about the protection of animals. In 2003, the Commission enacted new regulations on the export of live animals and tightened up those already in force. Today, the DG Agriculture has again confirmed to me that very tight controls are carried out both in the countries of origin and in the countries to which they are exported.
I would like to emphasise that Mr Bösch’s report, as is usual, takes a highly critical line, and so we are all the more pleased that the report expresses appreciation for the actions taken by the Commission. This is not the only reason for the Commission to be grateful to the rapporteur; on the contrary, many of the steps taken by the Commission in recent years to combat fraud originated in demands and suggestions made, in particular, by the Committee for Budgetary Control. The improvements and reforms at OLAF are among them. Here too, it was the rapporteur, Mr Bösch, who was particularly insistent on changes being made."@en1
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