Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-06-15-Speech-4-243"
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".
Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, first of all, I too would like to warmly thank the rapporteur, Mr Casaca, and the Committees on Budgetary Control and on Agriculture and Rural Development for their proposals in the form of amendments and above all for the constructive debate on this proposal. I am particularly grateful for their support for the basic principles underlying the Commission proposal, on which we are in agreement.
Mr Bösch pointed out that of all applications checked with regard to area, 40% were inaccurate. However, we need to clarify what we mean by inaccurate applications, and above all just what the defects are.
For example, if you look at the European Court of Auditors’ Statement of Assurance and in particular at the representative spot checks carried out by the Court of Auditors for 1998, the following facts emerged with regard to the support system for producers of arable crops: out of the entire random sample taken, a total of 16 substantial errors were found in relation to area. The deviations in these 16 incorrect applications were in ten cases between 0% and 3%, in four cases between 3% and 5% and for only two applications in the entire random sample for the whole Community was the deviation over 5%.
The other point that Mr Bösch raised, and which I also consider to be important, is the question of possible criminal aspects. The issue here is to what extent actual incidences of fraud are not subject of adequate prosecutions.
You all know that under present legislation and also in accordance with the current contractual arrangements, all matters relating to criminal law are the responsibility of the Member States. If cases of fraud or suspected fraud should actually arise in this area, then the national public prosecutor’s office should automatically be involved. The extent to which it would make sense to set up some kind of European public prosecutor’s office for financial matters or to introduce some kind of European financial prosecution procedure is an issue which ultimately has to be discussed in the framework of the Intergovernmental Conference, because it would imply a treaty amendment.
Although I cannot agree to all the amendments tabled by the committees, I would like to make it clear that the Commission supports the committees’ basic view that the integrated administration and control system needs to be further strengthened.
With regard to Amendment No 1, the Commission’s main motivation in presenting this proposal was firstly to adjust the integrated control system to the new legislative situation arising from Agenda 2000, secondly, to introduce the geographic information systems designed to improve the identification of agricultural areas and, thirdly, to stipulate compatibility between IACS and administration and control systems for other Community aid systems.
Also on amendments, I would like to make the following point: in the case of Amendment No 1, I agree with the criticism raised earlier in the debate that not all Member States have yet made sufficient progress in establishing IACS. However, it was not because of the transposal situation that the Commission presented its proposal for an amended regulation, but rather to introduce the new geographic information systems available.
As has also been explained, we have already taken advantage of the charging procedure, by setting a charge for those Member States lagging behind in that context also. Amendment No 2 suggests that various other aid systems should be brought under IACS, with those for olive oil, tobacco, flax and hemp being mentioned in particular.
There is one particular point that must be borne in mind here: these schemes are not exclusively “area” aid schemes, so they cannot be wholly brought under IACS. However, IACS will, of course, be applied as far as possible in these cases. In particular, if flax and hemp are now to be integrated into the arable support system, IACS will then be fully applied. But IACS or the geographic information system will also be used for determining areas and for drawing up the olive sector register.
With regard to Amendment No 3, the Commission is opposed to automatic exemption from the requirement to submit an area aid application for applying aid under a scheme not directly linked to agricultural area
The Commission has in any case already granted an exemption of this kind for special cases, and it should retain the option of first being able to check whether such an exemption is sensible.
The Commission is in full agreement with Amendment No 4 to the extent that it refers to Article 10, which is to be deleted. However, it is not possible totally to delete the provision affected in the way proposed. The Commission must also retain the right to carry out checks in relation to IACS.
I shall now turn to the other points raised in the debate. It has been proposed that payments should be centralised and that all data should be centralised. We believe that the effect of this would be exactly the opposite of what we wish to achieve. What we are looking for here is subsidiarity. We cannot carry out all the checks from Brussels. We know that there are millions of applications, and that means that it is only possible to check and control applications for compliance with the rules through decentralisation. If we need information, we can in any case always access case-by-case details via national IACS operations and through national payment agencies. There is no problem there. But for the same reason, it would not only be organisationally counterproductive in terms of modern management but also highly costly to automatically send all data to Brussels and store it centrally there."@en1
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