Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-10-04-Speech-3-332"
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"en.20001004.13.3-332"2
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"Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, the Socialist Group in this House supports Mr van Hulten’s report and therefore also the unanimous decision and proposal from the Committee on Budgetary Control. So – nothing against an independent, internal audit service, to which we are giving the green light today with Mr van Hulten’s report!
A professional audit is an essential component of modern management in the public and private sphere. However, a good audit is not in itself a miracle cure. I will not name any names here, but one could give a whole list of companies where renowned auditing firms have attested that all is well, only to find a few weeks or months later that they have collapsed.
That is why I find it worrying that the Commission is obviously still intending, as before, to introduce the new audit service not as a useful complementary service but as a substitute for the traditional financial control. As previous speakers made clear, that means it is on a head-on collision course with a majority in this Parliament, which after all is responsible for scrutinising and assessing the Commission.
Nor, unfortunately, is the independence of the new audit service beyond all doubt. Under the so-called fast-track procedure we are discussing today, the Commission guarantees that independence, but the draft document on the general reform of the Financial Regulation, of which we already have a provisional version, is a step back again in that respect.
Why, for instance, Commissioner, does the Commission not want to grant the internal auditor the power to initiate proceedings before the European Court of Justice in the event of his independence being impeded? And is the independence of the internal auditor not also impeded if – even before he is appointed – a fait accompli is established by recruiting his staff in advance? We have other examples of where that leads. We need only think of OLAF. Here too the Commission faced the new director with a fait accompli by simply transferring the entire team of the former UCLAF task force to OLAF, even though it was clear that some of the officials were totally unqualified for the job. Result: the new director may come from the outside, but he immediately finds himself ensnared in a system that is already firmly established. I hope we will not see a repeat performance here!
I can understand the Commission wanting to show that it can produce quick results; but when you talk to Commission officials, you get the sense of a mood of growing depression over the past months, and not only among the so-called losers, for of course some people are bound to lose out in any reform. Like several Member States, I think there is still some doubt as to what this general reform will cost at the final count or what benefits it will produce. We are still starting out from the simple idea that in the end the purpose of reform is to achieve greater efficiency. Today we still do not know whether it will and until we do I would advise this House to take a rather sceptical view of the European Commission’s reform process. After all, we owe it to our voters!"@en1
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