Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-04-03-Speech-2-120"
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".
Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, the budget process for any given budget year starts with priority setting, and this morning we debated the priorities for the 2002 budget. The conclusion of the budget process is the discharge granted by the European Parliament, which we have been debating today in respect of the 1999 budget. The discharge decision is a vital moment for the Commission and Parliament, as Parliament's democratic control functions come into full play at this point.
My personal objective and the Commission's objective is to improve financial management, to reduce fraud, to avoid errors, be they purely formal errors or errors with budgetary implications, and also to improve efficiency and ensure that public funds are used more effectively. These are very important objectives which require a joint effort to achieve. I have in mind above all the joint efforts of the Commission and the Member States, as 83% of the funds under the EU budget are administered by the Member States. The primary duty of control falls to them. We have also had detailed discussions in the Ecofin Council on these duties for the Member States. However, I still cannot say that I am entirely satisfied with the Member States' responses to the Court of Auditors' report, but at least more detailed information is now available about what the Member States have done in recent years to combat fraud.
Some of the areas of Community policy implemented by the Member States are, as we all know, also very much prone to fraud. One such area that I would like to mention here is that of agricultural export refunds. In this area, it is necessary to continuously check not only the procedures themselves, but also the control mechanisms. I say this because the control systems are not only weaker the further south you travel – which is a common perception – but also, in some regions which claim to have Prussian efficiency, there is in fact a somewhat
approach to control systems. In this case, the Commission relies not only on it own audits but it can also hit Member States' purses, by which I mean the use of financial sanctions by reducing payments to Member States. This sometimes – relatively often even – leads to protracted disputes and sometimes actual litigation. But I do not believe that that financial sanctions are discredited because of this, that is just how things are in a state bound by the rule of law. However, what is important is that the Commission should also use legal means to secure its position.
Export refunds are also an example of the fact that the legal bases are sometimes so detailed and specific that they can almost act as an incentive to fraudulent behaviour. For that reason it has also been agreed, under the administrative reform, that proposals for regulations put forward by the Commission should in future be scrutinised with regard to their susceptibility to fraud. In this respect I would also like to request extra cooperation from Parliament in its legislative role and special support from the Committee on Budgets, because stricter control procedures are not always welcomed with open arms by the relevant specialist committees or even the countries affected.
Cooperation with the legislature is absolutely essential for good financial management. Let me mention a very topical example of this: the Council recently decided in Stockholm – and this is actually supposed to be something positive, at least in the Council's eyes – that the Sixth Framework Programme on Research would be adopted in July 2002 but actually start as early as 1 January 2003. However, that simply does not allow enough time to properly carry out the tendering process and the preparatory work. If this timetable is not changed, we will quite consciously be embarking on a course leading to the kind of errors that the Court of Auditors and above all Parliament criticised with the last Framework Programme. I believe that we should not let history repeat itself. We must learn from our mistakes.
The "Fléchard case" started with the export of surplus intervention butter as aid to the former Soviet Union. The decisions concerned were made by the previous Commission between 1991 and 1994. Parliament investigated this case very thoroughly. The Court of Auditors analysed this case in detail and UCLAF and OLAF carried out various investigations. The present Commission has also examined the case from all angles and it has made all the information in its possession available to you as discharge authority. We all agree that it is not possible to undo what was done at that time. That is why you as discharge authority are justified in asking what would happen now if a similar case arose.
Many of the arrangements have changed since 1994. The regulation on the clearance of accounts procedure in the field of agricultural policy has been amended, and the division responsible for clearance of accounts in the relevant Directorate-General has been organisationally separated. In 1995 the regulation on the protection of the Community's financial interests, the "black list", was introduced, which the Member States are supposed to use to list companies who have shown gross negligence or have deliberately acted against the financial interests of the EU. Mr Blak is pressing here for an improvement in the procedure for drawing up this black list. I can assure you that we are already working on this. OLAF would then become the Community's independent investigatory authority, an important step.
As regards the future, not only have important changes been initiated through administrative reform, the new version of the Financial Regulation will provide a clearer framework, especially for the recovery of payments. This means that the recovery of payments can only be waived in part or in full if the Director-General responsible so decides, and in particular the decision to forego recovery must be justified. In case of doubt the Commission must decide. During the debates the Commission has also given Parliament an assurance that it will base the application of the administrative and legal principle of proportionality on clear, solid and transparent guidelines.
That was the long answer to the question "Would the Commission handle a similar case in exactly the same way now?" The short answer is "No!" It would take a different approach in comparable cases today.
The clear objective of the administrative reform of the Commission is to improve financial management. That is why the control functions of the individual Directorate-Generals have been beefed up, and why the Internal Audit Service has been strengthened, and that is why a central financial service has been created, the early warning system reinforced, and the recovery arrangements tightened up. We are improving the implementation of programmes of expenditure and we are building up the network of controls, and will not hesitate to impose financial sanctions. The 10-point black list in the report on reform will help us to take these further steps. I can assure you on behalf of the Commission that a decision by Parliament to grant a budget discharge within the specified time will act as a great incentive for the Commission to implement the reforms and persevere in its efforts.
This control extends to many areas, as the EU budget is very substantial – it amounted to EUR 84 billion in 1999 – and above all it covers a wide variety of activities, ranging from support for olive oil, nuts and school milk to student exchanges; from the development of petrol-saving cars to space research or information on the euro, from support for educating women in Africa to the restructuring of the fishing fleet or to food aid after an earthquake or after a civil war.
In view of this wide range, which I have just listed by way of example, control of the budget process covers nearly all the Commission's activities. Mr Blak, the general rapporteur for the budget discharge, adopted exactly this approach to the wide-ranging control of a broad spectrum of policy areas in respect of which public money is spent. This was hard work for everyone concerned. This is demonstrated by the detailed questionnaires, but also and above all by the report before us.
Mr Blak, you have a reputation for being a very harsh critic of mismanagement. Having worked with you over these past months, I can really confirm that and bear witness that you have lived up to your reputation. At the same time, I would like to thank you for the balance and fairness of your report and for the clear approach that you adopted in it. The aim of that approach was to highlight both good and bad features in all areas, and to insist through your decisions and evaluations on achieving an improvement in Community policy.
The Commission will be taking measures in response to your most important findings. As all good chefs know, the key to culinary success is to cook the right ingredients at the right temperature. The committee has devoted many hours of meetings to the discharge process, and above all it has held various hearings with the Commissioners responsible. I would also like, on behalf of the Commission, to thank you for the excellent cooperation and work in the committee, and to extend those thanks to the chair of the committee, Mrs Theato.
The basis for the annual discharge procedure is the Court of Auditors' annual report. For 1999, the Court gave the Commission a positive Statement of Assurance on the revenue side, for commitment appropriations and for administrative expenditure, but not for other payment transactions, as has also been the case in previous years. The committee and the rapporteur have not only relied on the professional work of the Court for their reports, but also on material provided by the Commission, and on detailed replies, on several extensive questionnaires and on a summary of a great many audit reports and on the audit reports themselves. The rapporteur, Mr Blak, examined over 60 of the documents provided by the Commission, running to several thousand pages.
One of the key documents for the whole discharge procedure is the Commission's discharge action plan. In this document the Commission presents the precise measures it is taking in order to respond to the Court of Auditors' criticisms. These are not vague promises – the plan specifies in precise terms what is to be done and when. The same applies to the follow-up report – 48 pages in all – to the European Parliament's discharge decision for the 1998 budget. This report gives a detailed response to the requests made in Mrs Stauner's report from last year. Follow-up actions to this are presented such that they can be verified.
In order to implement the action plan for the European Development Fund the Commission last year undertook the necessary work in conjunction with Parliament. I would like to thank the rapporteur, Mrs Rühle, for her work and for making it clear that the discharge for the European Development Fund has not been rejected, but postponed. The proposal to postpone the discharge is, of course, still a matter of regret for the Commission, because it unilaterally decided to considerably extend inquiries into macroeconomic aid in Africa, for example, in order to get to the bottom of some problems in that area. Mrs Rühle has recognised that these are steps in the right direction. I can safely say that overall the administration of European Development Fund money is by no means worse than the administration of development aid from the EU budget. But I can in any case assure the Mrs Rühle as rapporteur that the Commission will make good use of this time to complete the outstanding documents without delay and to take the necessary steps here.
I would also like to thank two other rapporteurs, Mrs van der Laan and Mr Seppänen. Although the ECSC Treaty expires next year, the relevant research activity will continue. The audit findings here are also very important."@en1
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