Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-06-15-Speech-4-015"
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".
Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, a parliament has many tasks. Not only does it draft and simplify laws, but it also monitors certain decisions and the question whether those decisions have been carried out correctly. One of those core monitoring tasks is to inspect the implementation of the budget: it has to check whether the more than EUR 100 billion which is used to carry out European policy has been spent well and correctly, whether European taxpayers’ money has been used wisely and efficiently and whether it ends up in the right hands.
For the 2004 budget year, the irregularities and fraud reported by the Member States amounted to nearly EUR 1 billion. Whilst, in the past, we could see that most of those cases pertained to agriculture and to a lesser degree to expenses in structural policy, we can now, as Mr Bösch rightly said, detect a buck in the trend: there are now more reports in respect of the Structural Funds, and fewer regarding agriculture. This drop within agriculture is, of course, wholly attributable to the effectiveness of the integrated control system. Against this backdrop, I should like to emphasise that it is unacceptable that one Member State, Greece, should still remain in default seven years after the event.
Mr Bösch has managed to aptly summarise what has gone wrong, and he has not minced his words in doing so. He used the extremely efficient method of naming and shaming, and quite rightly so. Partly thanks to the support of the anti-fraud Commissioner, Mr Kallas, in the past year, we managed to force a number of Member States to publicise the final beneficiaries of the agricultural funds. That has given us a good insight into the spending pattern of agricultural funds and into the anomalies. More than anything, it taught us once again that the funds do not always end up with the farmers, but with major food giants.
I think that we should now take things one step further and force the Member States to publicise the final beneficiaries of the Structural Funds, including the Regional Development Fund and Social Fund. I should also like to use this debate to pay tribute to the people of the European Anti-Fraud Office, OLAF. They are doing sterling work, although they have sometimes come under criticism. Mr Bösch is right in mentioning in his report a number of negative points, but we should always remember that enormous progress has been made over the past eight years.
I should like to finish off by saying a few words about two very fraud-sensitive areas, namely VAT fraud and cigarette smuggling. VAT fraud must be addressed, and I welcome the Commission’s communication in that respect. With respect to cigarette smuggling, I will be publishing an own-initiative report later on in the year. I am delighted that, despite the fact that an own-initiative report will be issued, Mr Bösch has already devoted a number of paragraphs in his report to this very issue. We have struck a deal with Philip Morris, and the money that we generate from this deal should be ploughed back into anti-fraud policy. As Commissioner Špidla was right in saying, I think that we, along with the Commission, must examine how those funds should be used, for example in the Hercules programme. We will need to put much of our time and energy into this in the coming months."@en1
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