Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-06-15-Speech-4-027"
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"en.20060615.4.4-027"2
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"Mr President, I would like to thank Mr Bösch for a fine report. The report represents work of a very high quality, as is always the case when Mr Bösch is involved.
We are aware, unfortunately, that the EU has a problem of legitimacy. The EU has an image problem when it comes to how it administers taxpayers' money. This problem is the result of two facts. The first of these is the simple fact that fraud involving EU funds does take place. The other is that there is not enough transparency. Clearly, this sets a number of challenges for the institutions – the European Parliament, OLAF and the other EU institutions. Firstly, what is of course needed to solve the problems that exist is, quite simply, better monitoring. Secondly, the situation calls for greater transparency.
I recently read an article in a Danish newspaper bearing the headline ‘Everyone is talking about transparency, but no one is doing anything about it’. I believe that, unfortunately, this article was truly symptomatic of the view that the European people have of Europe. Everyone talks about transparency. We all want transparency, but we do nothing about it. Fortunately, something is happening. Fortunately, the Commission is currently in the process of taking an initiative whereby it is to be obligatory to publish the names of those receiving agricultural subsidies. This is a step in the right direction. We would like the same principle also to apply to Structural Fund resources. It should, of course, be the case that every journalist, every citizen and everyone else can log on to a website very easily and very simply and see the names of those receiving the Union’s money.
More also needs to be done, however, in relation to monitoring. We in the Socialist Group in the European Parliament acknowledge that the integrated financial control system works well, but we do believe, at the same time, that it is a problem that the system has still not been fully implemented, more than seven years after the date by which it was supposed to have been implemented. The same applies to resources from the Structural Funds, where there is likewise a lack of satisfactory monitoring.
It is very easy to forget such things when discussing the great developments of European cooperation. For example, are we to have a Constitutional Treaty? Is Turkey to join? Yet the truth is that these questions are incredibly important in terms of achieving legitimacy in the eyes of the people of Europe. For purely idealistic reasons, too, we should of course be working to ensure that every single euro paid by European taxpayers is responsibly administered and to ensure that this is done in a transparent manner."@en1
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