Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2010-11-11-Speech-4-012"
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"en.20101111.3.4-012"2
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"Mr President, Mr Šemeta, Mr Caldeira, I would like to thank the Court of Auditors for this report. Your organisation, Mr Caldeira, provides an essential service for European taxpayers. It is a good thing that the reduction in the error rate has continued this year. This is the result of the reform of the Commission which was pushed through by the liberal Commissioner, Mr Kallas. There are major improvements over the previous year in the area of cohesion and only a slight deterioration in agriculture. However, the Commission should not now simply sit back and do nothing. We must make it clear that the huge improvements are based on a very lucky choice of samples. Therefore, I am concerned that the positive trend will not continue next year. We should make use of the momentum from the first budget discharge under the Treaty of Lisbon to introduce a decisive paradigm shift.
I would like to make it clear once again that this year’s report from the Court of Auditors is the sixteenth in a row which does not have positive overall results. How can we finally bring an end to the inefficient and wasteful allocation of funding and to the political connivance in this area?
My proposals as rapporteur are as follows: Firstly, the Commission must intervene more strongly in the case of obvious errors and, where these errors are repeated, it must suspend the funding. How is it that a Member State of many years standing like Greece is not subjected to sanctions over a period of 10 years, despite the fact that it is in obvious breach of the provisions of the Integrated Administration and Control System (IACS)?
Secondly, we must no longer impose double penalties on taxpayers. The beneficiaries of EU funding which has been allocated illegally are only required to repay 10%. In accordance with the 50:50 rule, the Member States contribute half of the amount from their national budgets. This is an insult to taxpayers. Let me give you a few figures. Between 1994 and 2006, the Member States have been wrongly allocated a phenomenal EUR 7.7 billion in the area of cohesion policy. The Commission itself has just made this fact public. Only EUR 709 million has been paid back, which demonstrates very clearly the difference in these circumstances. This is probably correct, because the Member States are not in a position to come up with accurate calculations. The Court of Auditors has confirmed this.
Thirdly, all the Member States must finally sign and submit national management declarations. Fourthly, the Commission must be politically accountable. This is why we want signatures at least from Mr Barroso on the synthesis report on annual activities. We also want an evaluation report, which is provided for in the Treaty of Lisbon.
There are still some things that are in need of improvement. All in all, I would like to thank the Court of Auditors very much for this report."@en1
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