Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2010-05-05-Speech-3-636"
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"en.20100505.81.3-636"2
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"Mr President, honourable Members, on behalf of my colleague, Commissioner Šemeta, I would firstly like to thank the rapporteur for his constructive report and the proposals put forward for improving the protection of the Union’s financial interests.
The Commission appreciates that Parliament strongly underlines the joint responsibility of the EU institutions and the Member States in this respect. Let me just make a couple of remarks.
Regarding the reporting of irregularities by the Member States, OLAF has established a new web-based reporting system called IMS: Irregularities Management System. This has brought about considerable improvements in the reporting of irregularities by Member States, including those which you criticise in your report. The Structural Funds is an area of particular concern both for the Parliament and the Commission. The Commission has taken strong actions to remedy weaknesses in the most affected areas and programmes in the framework of the action plan for structural actions in 2008, including a vast simplification exercise.
With his fellow commissioners, my colleague Commissioner Šemeta, will pursue efforts aiming at reducing further the error rate in cohesion policy. The Commission will assist and monitor the Member States for the closure of the 2000-2006 programmes and will make sure that the management and control systems under the new programming period will deliver their benefit. Moreover, the Commission will liaise with the Member States’ authorities to ensure that they fully assume their responsibility in shared management as reinforced by the new provisions in the Lisbon Treaty.
Considerable progress has been achieved concerning transparency about the beneficiaries of EU funds. In the area of agriculture the Council has agreed that publication of the beneficiaries of funds is the responsibility of the Member States. The information has to be made available on a single website in each Member State, in line with the principle of shared management. To provide an overview and facilitate access to the Member States’ websites, the links to these websites are linked on the Europa web page.
I come now to OLAF. I thank the rapporteur for the strong support he explicitly states for the work of OLAF. My colleague Commissioner Šemeta fully agrees that the office should concentrate on its core tasks of conducting investigations, although OLAF also has other important duties to fulfil, in particular in the area of fraud prevention. He also agrees that the focus for OLAF should be on the more important cases and that small-scale fraud should be handled by other bodies.
In 2008 OLAF revised the financial follow-up procedures relating to OLAF cases by establishing de minimis thresholds. Commissioner Šemeta has taken good note of your comments on the need for OLAF to work together with the internal audit services, which he fully shares. OLAF and IAS have been cooperating closely since 2003. They exchange information and provide each other with specific training to improve their respective staff knowledge on issues of mutual interest. OLAF is willing to cooperate still more closely with the IAS.
Regarding procedural rights, the new OLAF manual adopted in December 2009, which has been transmitted to Parliament, already provides comprehensive guidance for OLAF investigators. More detailed rules on procedural rights will be included in the legislative proposal for revision of the OLAF regulation. In this respect the Commission would also recall that the reflection paper on the legislative reform of OLAF will be submitted to Parliament and the Council before the summer break.
Commissioner Šemeta looks forward to presenting this paper to the Committee on Budgetary Control at its meeting in July. Finally, he looks forward very much to working with Parliament as an ally in the task of improving the efficiency of OLAF and the protection of EU taxpayers’ money."@en1
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