Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-04-26-Speech-3-180"
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"en.20060426.15.3-180"2
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"Mr President, I should firstly like to thank my fellow Member, Mr Mulder, for all the painstaking work he has done, as well as thank the other rapporteurs. It is, of course, regrettable that, this year again, we do not have a straightforward statement of assurance. As is well known, the EU should ideally be a model for the Member States, especially for the new countries with new and untried administrations. I doubt, however, whether we are being a particularly good model, given the major problem that exists of our not yet being able to present a straightforward statement of assurance. I agree with Mr Mulder’s observation that it is unsatisfactory that the Member States are not prepared to issue statements concerning the supervision of the resources they have received. We must ensure that this is done.
It is, of course, also the case that responsibility for the administration cannot lie with the Commission alone but that the Council and the Member States also bear some responsibility. There are a number of situations or cases in which I am unable to recommend granting discharge, simply because we would then be granting this in the dark. In some areas we are taking on tasks that, in reality, we cannot carry out. Proof of that is the situation concerning Parliament’s accounts, as described today by Mr Ferber. Yesterday we were certain that everything was in order and we were ready to grant discharge, but in the course of the night we knew better.
It is of course by pure chance that we are now in a situation in which we must ask for the discharge to be postponed because we simply do not know enough. It is of course quite odd that, for 25 years, both Parliament’s administration and our audit department have overlooked – at least they say they have done so – an extremely dubious payment to the city of Strasbourg. This is, of course, in reality a payment to a quite superfluous middleman, and if anyone in our administration would have us believe they did not know this, I have to say that I do not believe that the administration is so incompetent.
What is more, it has to be asked whether it really is possible to enter into such financial agreements without carefully evaluating the various options and offers. No, of course it is not. Someone has helped someone else obtain an illicit dollop of taxpayers’ money, and, if I know the system, no one will be held liable because, of course, no one knew anything. As the Commission’s previous President, Mr Prodi, said about the Eurostat scandal: what one does not know about, one cannot be held liable for. Do not, then, read through the contracts. In that way you can always say that you did not know anything and so be free from liability.
As I say, we could have got away with granting discharge, but we are not going to grant it. I am able to recommend that the granting of discharge be postponed, as proposed by Mr Ferber. As for the other areas, our attitude is described in the report."@en1
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