Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-02-18-Speech-1-111"
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"en.20080218.22.1-111"2
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"Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, the EPP-ED Group is responsible for the report on the fight against fraud for the first time and we are very grateful to Mr Musotto for making OLAF's work and the cooperation with the Member States the focus of his report. He had to work very hard, having to contend with 630 pages of statistical material from 2005 and 2006 on the fight against fraud. His review reveals a very mixed picture and I believe that we really need to take action here. Uncovering irregularities does not appear to be a very important issue for the Member States. This is apparent from the fact that, yet again, the Council is absent from this very important debate, despite the fact that as the second arm of the budgetary authority, it should be concerned about what is happening to the taxpayers' money, which it is responsible for managing and disbursing.
The rapporteur proposes taking formal steps against Germany and Spain for their violations of EU law. Spain is only providing paper information about irregularities. Moreover, this information is extremely sketchy, as is apparent from the 18th Structural Funds report.
Germany is a very specific case. It takes longer to provide the information than the other Member States, and it is the only country which does not disclose names. How can OLAF do its job without names? The fraudsters are hiding behind data protection here, for the fact is, Mr Březina, that between 15% and 20% of the irregularities have some kind of fraudulent background. Germany is also putting obstacles in the way of OLAF's investigative work at local level, notably in cases of customs offences and export refunds. We are calling on the Commission to report on every Member State and its willingness or lack of willingness to cooperate, and to do so by the time the next OLAF report is due.
From our Group's perspective, the forthcoming reform of OLAF's legal basis must be utilised, first and foremost, to improve the working conditions in OLAF's cooperation with the Member States. I would like to express my warm thanks to OLAF itself and to the staff who are working in a very difficult area. I think that the outcomes really do stand up to scrutiny. However, I am also convinced that these outcomes could be improved through better cooperation with the Member States."@en1
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