Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2004-12-02-Speech-4-020"
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"en.20041202.4.4-020"2
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"Mr President, ten years ago I was the rapporteur for the discharge and ten years ago I made the statement that we will never have a positive statement of assurance – DAS. I said that because, regardless of the failings within the Commission or whatever was wrong as regards irregularities, we could see quite clearly ten years ago that there were two incompatible systems: the system being used by the Court to do its audit and the system being used by the Commission in the way it functioned.
I have a final point. Thankfully I am on the temporary committee for the new financial perspectives. We should not agree a new financial perspective until we have resolved this problem of reliability and accountability from the Member States.
Changes have taken place over the last ten years. The Court has changed its methodology – it has moved to the four-pillar system – and the Commission has had the Kinnock reforms, but I still remain convinced that, even from 1 January next year with the new financial regulations and the new accounting systems, we will still not see a positive DAS because of the way things are organised. I would like to address one comment to Mr Titford. In your own country the Department of Social Security has failed to get clearance of its accounts for the last 14 years. The American federal budget has failed to get any clearance of its accounts for the last six years. This is not a unique organisation and it would have helped, Mr Titford, if you had actually taken part in the hearings we held – all six of them. At least Mr Mote turned up on some occasions and put some questions, but then again Mr Mote is an independent UK Independent, not a UK Independent as Mr Titford is.
But anyway, back to my script. What we have is the Commission saying that it uses the clearance of accounts because that is what it says in the financial regulation. That is how it controls such things as agricultural expenditure. So its attitude is that they can recover the funds – why does the Court of Auditors not include that in the DAS? A point worth making is that when the clearance of accounts is used the money is actually recovered from the Member States. It is not recovered from the farmers or receiving organisations, which means that national taxpayers foot the bill for any irregularities or fraud.
Then the Court says that to recover is good, but we should have a system where you do not need to recover. The system should be better. Well that is quite understandable. So the Commission then says: yes, but to do what the Court actually wants will cost so much money that it simply will not be cost-effective. That I can also understand.
I will be looking at a variety of conclusions from the Committee on Budgetary Control’s six hearings with the Commissioners and the Court. It is obvious to anyone that one of the main problems is that of shared management. As one of the Members of the Court said in the hearings, it is not a problem of control, it is not a problem of audit, it is a problem of management. So I am beginning to think that we need a system which makes the authorising bodies in the Member States responsible for giving assurance on legality and regularity.
It seems strange that in a shared management system only half of the partnership needs to be responsible. That will mean changes to legislation and it will mean the cooperation of the Council and the Member States. From the Court’s point of view I have yet to be convinced that two of the four pillars as mentioned by Mr Fabra Vallés are reliable.
I have real concerns about the amount of transactions inspected and I also question the extent to which other auditors’ work is used. We need a regular activity report on the work done with national audits to be sure that the four pillars give a transparent DAS. There will also be the perennial request from Parliament that the Court should sectionalise its DAS so that the budgetary authority knows exactly where the problems lie.
We are in a situation that sees a set of rules from the Court that can never be met by the Commission within reasonable costs no matter what it does, compared with the benefits to be gained. I am not trying to bend the rules, I am trying to make them fit. I am asking the Court to try to establish a set of rules that can be played by. Imagine Barcelona playing Manchester United in the European Cup Final. There is a crowd of 70 000 and all eyes are on the pitch and on the players. The whole of Europe is looking at this. On comes the referee, he walks to the centre spot and he places at the feet of Wayne Rooney not a football, but a rugby ball. As the players try to point out the problems that they may have with an oval ball, he says never mind the ball, get on with the game!
That, quite frankly, is the attitude that the Court has towards efforts to change the system. It is never mind the ball, get on with the game. However, let us be clear: this analogy does not mean that the Commission or the Member States should be seen as the elites of public administration."@en1
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