Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2009-04-21-Speech-2-159"
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"en.20090421.19.2-159"2
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"Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, the Audy report – my sincere thanks to the rapporteur – really takes us a step further forward, because it contains innovative elements such as naming and shaming – a milestone in budgetary control. This means targeted criticism instead of general complaints. The fact that the Socialist Group is now backing down and would rather sweep the truth under the carpet is scandalous and does a disservice to our control activities. The credibility of Parliament is on the line and I appeal to my fellow Members not to allow that to happen.
I would like to say something about our biggest problems, Romania and Bulgaria. The failure of the Commission in connection with the preparation for the accessions of these countries is most evident here. We have lost a lot of money. The Commission sat back and watched for a long time and did not freeze the funds until 2008. In the meantime, however, over EUR 1 billion was lost in connection with Bulgaria and around EUR 142 million in connection with Romania. Freezing funds is no solution to the problems, however. The cooperation and verification mechanism, for which the President of the Commission himself is responsible, is a paper tiger, and the progress reports are not worthy of the name. The Audy report makes suggestions as to how this could be improved. The European Commission deceived Parliament about the readiness of these countries for accession and the Commissioner for Enlargement should in fact learn a lesson from this. We are interested in the management of future accessions, however, and therefore this topic remains on the agenda.
Our Group will grant discharge to the Commission, but, personally, I will refuse to grant it discharge. Unfortunately, the Commission’s zeal for reform, a tiny spark of which we were once again able to detect over the last year, has already been extinguished again. There is a standstill in connection with combating fraud, nothing is happening with regard to prevention and there is no desire for more ethical behaviour, among other things. One thing the Commission, and Commissioner Kallas in particular, should be clear about is that whoever wishes to be in the new Commission is dependent on the support of Parliament."@en1
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