Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-12-03-Speech-3-141"
| Predicate | Value (sorted: default) |
|---|---|
| rdf:type | |
| dcterms:Date | |
| dcterms:Is Part Of | |
| dcterms:Language | |
| lpv:document identification number |
"en.20031203.10.3-141"2
|
| lpv:hasSubsequent | |
| lpv:speaker | |
| lpv:translated text |
".
Mr President, honourable Members, with your permission, I would like to respond briefly to a number of points. There is certainly no doubt that the Eurostat affair is not merely about gross misconduct at Eurostat – and I refrain from using the term ‘fraud’ simply because the matter is still under judicial investigation and I do not want to be accused of making prejudicial comments. Mistakes were also made in the Commission, and OLAF should have carried out the investigations more swiftly. This is why Mr Prodi has also devised an action plan which, on the one hand, contains comprehensive measures regarding Eurostat and, on the other hand, addresses the issue of communication between the departments and the Commissioners, as well as measures relating to OLAF. Let me say again to Mrs Stauner: the measures relating to OLAF do not include shifting the internal investigations into Commission officials back to the Commission. On the contrary – and let me quote from Mr Prodi’s speech – the aim is strengthening OLAF’s operational independence by refocusing its activities. Therefore there might be a case for reassigning to Commission departments certain horizontal tasks that are unrelated to investigations. I think you know as well as I do that OLAF’s core tasks – in other words, what was reinforced and, in part, newly established in 1999 – are indeed the internal investigations, the rights to conduct internal investigations, and the duties to do so. I entirely agree with Mr Bösch that more capacities must be established in these areas. At the same time, however, it is also true – as the Eurostat case itself has shown – that sometimes an external investigation becomes an internal investigation because the external investigation suddenly raises the question: Why did these mistakes with the competition process occur? Why are these specific contracts always concluded here?
Let me reiterate one point: the drafting of the action plan which Mr Prodi has outlined to the Committee on Budgetary Control is well under way and the text to amend the law of the Regulation will be with you at the start of January, I hope, or at any rate promptly in January. I see many similar approaches on the issue of the amendment of the Regulation. Mrs Theato has just mentioned them again. As the President of the Commission has pledged, we will work very closely on these points with the Committee on Budgetary Control, also in advance of the drafting process."@en1
|
Named graphs describing this resource:
The resource appears as object in 2 triples