Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-06-15-Speech-4-011"
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"en.20060615.4.4-011"2
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"Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, with regard to this report on fraud for the year 2004, we should keep in mind that the irregularities, and I stress again that these are irregularities and not fraud – since fraud usually only makes up a fraction thereof – remain relatively stable at hardly 1% of the EU budget. It is of course interesting that within the budget there are certain shifts that may be observed over the medium term and the long term. In this connection, we above all welcome, and can even note with pride, the fact that in recent years we have achieved massive reductions in irregularities in our biggest area, namely agriculture. From 2003 to 2004, losses were reduced by approximately 50%, from EUR 170 million to EUR 80 million. Conversely – and unfortunately – we have to note that losses from the Structural Funds have increased from EUR 482 million to EUR 694 million.
We can unanimously ascribe the receding figures for agriculture to the fact that the Integrated Administration and Control System is obviously having an effect. Wherever it is applied, there are positive results; so of course we must insist even more firmly that the InAdCo System is indeed applied. In our report we note critically that, as long as seven years after the expiry of the implementation deadline, an old Member State, namely Greece, has not yet applied it. Of course we encourage the Commission to attend to this matter, because these methods of proceeding must be applied across the board.
The next point to attract our attention relates to pre-accession aid. Everything that has to do with enlargement is politically sensitive, but we have to make sure that, in this area too, things are done properly in budgetary terms. The extent of the suspected irregularities is cause for concern, but far worse is the fact that the Commission, by its own admission, does not really know what kind of irregularities these are, and consequently does not know either what is recoverable or how it may be recovered – and this in as many as 90% of cases.
In other words, the Commission is practically blind in this affair, and so we must take precautionary steps. We know that the administrative capacities of the accession countries are indeed somewhat smaller, but I would ask Parliament and the Commission to take this into consideration in future budgets. We do not want to pour extra water into barrels that are already full, since in the end this will cause them to overflow.
In last year’s report on the fight against fraud we dealt with cigarette smuggling as a top priority, and we are – frankly – proud that important work has been done here by the Commission and by OLAF. Twenty-four countries, including the new Member States, have now entered into the agreement with Philip Morris – with one exception, which we regret: Great Britain. We would certainly like the Commission to spend the payments due from Philip Morris – in total around EUR 1 billion – in a sensible way, and we think it regrettable that, so far, it has been unable to do so. The Commission should provide concrete suggestions and initiatives for the use of this income.
We estimate that, in the EU in 2004, cigarette smuggling caused the loss of customs revenue worth around EUR 418 million – and this trend is set to increase. This is an issue that needs to be solved at European level. Measures taken by Member States will be of little use.
For the first time we have also included VAT fraud. We estimate that Member States lose 10% of VAT revenue every year through VAT fraud, and I would like emphatically to urge the Commission to take this matter further in conjunction with the European Parliament and to support it in doing so.
Finally, I turn to the imminent reform of OLAF. On 24 May the Commission adopted the proposal for a regulation; however, even now it has not yet passed this on to Parliament, and so the parliamentary process cannot yet begin. Today, we shall, however, propose some clear guidelines on this issue. Thus, for example, Parliament will not agree to any regulation that restricts its rights in any way.
As far as OLAF’s work is concerned, priorities have increasingly shifted in recent years away from OLAF’s original primary task, namely that of carrying out investigations, and towards coordination functions and providing a platform. Expansion of coordination activities must definitely not occur at the expense of investigations, since the outward effects of this could be fatal. If the discussion on reform is to include a possible extension of OLAF’s activities, then the Commission and this House must be clear from the beginning that this will necessitate further financial and human resources. We both need to come to an agreement about this."@en1
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