Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2004-12-02-Speech-4-017"
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"en.20041202.4.4-017"2
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".
Mr President, my comments on the Court of Auditors’ annual report for 2003 regrettably echo my thoughts last year. Little has changed: accounts are not signed off and something like 94% of the data are deemed unacceptable, either unsafe or riddled with error. More than half the Commission’s directors-general signed their declarations with reservations. This is the EU saying ‘I have not got a clue’. It all sounds too familiar.
Well, so it should. This has been happening for ten long years. In my country any company that submitted one set of unsafe accounts would be dealt with very firmly, but the EU has got away with it – as I have said – for no less than ten years. The great tragedy is that this decade-long saga of corruption and mismanagement is funded by the poor old taxpayers.
There can be no greater testimony to the impotence of this institution than the fact that such a scandal has been allowed to go on for so long. Yet Marta Andreasen was sacked for telling the truth and Parliament adopted a resolution requiring the Secretary-General and President of the Committee of the Regions to present their apologies to an internal auditor for the harassment that he had endured, but this was not forthcoming. It goes on and on.
This report attempts to shift the blame for the unholy mess on to the Member States, but we should be under no illusions about where the blame really lies. The European Commission is the exclusive custodian of the monies paid into the European Union by the Member States and it alone holds the power to withhold payments if it observes any form of wrongdoing. Instead the Commission has simply sat on its hands and looked the other way for ten long years.
But of course it is not only in this place that people should hold their heads in shame. Mr Blair and his colleagues back in Britain should be holding their heads for continuing to pour taxpayers’ money into the European Union at the rate of GBP 1.5 million per hour when they know full well what a mess the whole thing is. The British Government has an obligation to spend taxpayers’ money wisely. It is singularly failing in this operation.
Does this situation not bother anybody? It certainly bothers me and it bothers my party. We look for some changes in the future."@en1
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