Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-11-20-Speech-4-015"
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".
Mr President, I, too, should like to thank the Court of Auditors, and not least their staff. They have once again done a sterling job. I should like to remind the Commissioner that it is true that, at the start of your mandate as Anti-Fraud Commissioner, you promised and pledged to produce, by the end of your mandate, a statement that confirms reliability of the accounts, as well as the regularity and lawfulness of all accounts.
Have we achieved this yet? Clearly not. For the 14th time in a row, this statement has not materialised. Are we heading in the right direction? Without a doubt, or so says the Court of Auditors, and you are there to defend this stance with tooth and nail. Should we be worried? I think so. You have exactly one year left, though, to make good on your promise, your pledge, and there is a great deal to be done yet, as my fellow Members said themselves.
What has the Court of Auditors noticed? There are flaws in the bookkeeping system, partly attributable to the complex legal and financial framework. According to the Court of Auditors, there is a risk when it comes to quality and financial information. What does the Court of Auditors say about the regularity and lawfulness of payments? Does it sanction the administrative expenses? There are major problems in large sections of the budget, including agriculture, the Cohesion Fund, the structural funds, the Regional Fund, social policy, rural development, research and development, energy, transport, external support, development and expansion, education and citizenship. A representative sample has been made of everything related to cohesion, namely the Cohesion Fund itself and the structural funds. We note that, in its report, the Court of Auditors states that in 11% of the cases payments should never have been made. This is a very serious finding, and something to which much attention will need to be devoted in the discharge.
2007 was the first year – as various fellow Members pointed out – in which the Member States were asked to draft an annual summary of the available inspections and statements, but, according to the Court of Auditors, it does not work. The summaries cannot be compared and they do not contain all the information we need. Despite this, as Mr Mulder pointed out with good reason, there was a pledge, a political agreement. This is something we worked hard for in Parliament. What do we see now? A whole host of Member States are reluctant to lend their cooperation. It is notably the eurosceptic countries that are pulling their weight: the United Kingdom, Denmark and the Netherlands to a great extent. Surely this cannot be? We should indeed remind the Council of its responsibility in this.
Finally, on behalf of the Group of the Greens/European Free Alliance, I should like to underline the political requirement with regard to the Member States, namely that they should indeed face up to their political responsibility for the spending they help manage. This is their darned duty! In addition, we would also like to see more transparency about the end beneficiaries. There may be an attractive website, but I have noticed that a number of Member States, including my own country Belgium, place information on it which is woefully inadequate and wholly intransparent. There is work to be done in that area too, therefore, and we will need to fight for this during the discharge."@en1
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