Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-06-06-Speech-1-107"
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"en.20050606.14.1-107"2
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".
Thank you for your comments. Several speakers touched upon the subject of OLAF. As I said, and as you all know, in July we will have a broad discussion about the status of OLAF and the legal environment surrounding it. I hope we can settle some of the outstanding questions during the hearings. My desire, and that of the Commission, is to calm the turbulence surrounding OLAF, to develop a reliable, efficient organisation, where it is possible to follow a case from start to finish and deal with it in a reasonable timescale, following all necessary procedures and without intervening in matters of substance. We must create an institution that is a beacon of trust and which helps us to dispel the shadow of suspicion, which is everywhere in the European institutions, not only concerning OLAF, but all issues.
I agree with Mr Bösch and other speakers that we have an extensive range of rules and programmes that may give rise to the possibility of fraud, but also offer great scope for mismanagement and weak control. No-one fully understands the origins of these programmes, rules and subsidies. Consequently, I ask Members of Parliament to support all the efforts we are now making to simplify the rules and proposals so as to make the financial system more transparent, simpler, visible and easier to follow and control. This is a major question. The Commission and Parliament have made proposals, but we need more concrete proposals. Sometimes, someone suggests that a regulation or subsidy should be abolished because of the damage it is causing. Then someone else will say that it is good enough, that we cannot change anything, that there are certain political purposes and reasons behind it, so we try instead to simplify it, with the result that little is finally achieved.
I am happy to hear that there is a clear understanding about the responsibility of Member States in all these matters. We are preparing certain proposals to strengthen our single audit model as part of the integrated control framework. I hope that I can soon inform Members of Parliament of our proposals. So far the response to these proposals has been very positive in several Member States, but not in all. The sharing of responsibility between the Commission and Member States is crucial.
Mr Mulder asked about the public prosecutor. The Commission has been very much in favour of the idea of a public prosecutor, but many Member States have not been very positive on this issue. The Commission did not include it in its working programme, because it saw clearly that it would meet fierce resistance from certain Member States. It was included in the ‘Hague programme’, which increases judicial cooperation between Member States. As far as I know, however, it is being withdrawn from that programme. We deeply regret this and will try to find other ways to increase cooperation between Member States.
The issues raised by Mr Fazakas clearly show how the lack of a proper cooperation mechanism makes it difficult to achieve effective results. In reply to his question, of course we will provide a report up to October 2005. Yet this is an issue where we can clearly see that one Member State initially made intensive efforts, with very good cooperation with OLAF, and then the case was divided up among the Member States where these operations occurred. Judiciaries in the different Member States examined these issues in very different ways, giving priority to different aspects. Therefore, some kind of model for cooperation would be very useful.
As Mr Lundgren pointed out, fighting fraud is a very systemic question. The Commission wishes to develop a systemic response to possible fiscal mismanagement. We can never avoid bad things, but the question, in a democratic society, is how we handle such cases and how we develop a systemic response capable of dealing with all possible nasty surprises."@en1
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