Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-05-16-Speech-2-047"
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"en.20000516.4.2-047"2
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"Mr President, the current year is the first in which OLAF is fully operational. It needs to be pointed out here that this is a decisive step in protecting the financial interests of the Union, the impetus for which came from this House and, in particular, from the Committee on Budgetary Control and from the present rapporteur, our colleague, Herbert Bösch. With an increase in staff, with a new structure and independence, all the conditions are now in place for OLAF to concentrate on fighting fraud in an area where the objective and verifiable figures point to a more serious situation.
Fraud and other irregularities in the traditional own resources reported by Member States reached a total of EUR 538 million in 1998, an amount unparalleled in any other area of Community expenditure, either in absolute or relative terms. Special report No 9 of the Court of Auditors on the protection of the European Union’s financial interests in the area of VAT on intra-Community trade points to an even more serious situation. According to the Court of Auditors, the gap between actual receipts and their theoretical amount is EUR 70 thousand million. Unlike the main areas of expenditure, which the Commission monitors and on which it imposes a system of sanctions, there is nothing comparable in these two vital areas of the Community’s own resources.
The Commission, specifically in its recent reports on administrative cooperation and on procedures for collection and taxation, describes a situation which is characterised by the maintenance of a system for VAT collection, which was only intended to be used on a temporary basis but is being used permanently. This system is also characterised by the increasing complexity of the system and by the widespread shortage of human resources and monitoring materials compared to the volume of transactions. Despite the fact that there is widespread agreement on the need to overcome the problems of fighting fraud which result from restrictions imposed by national legislation, or to the lack of a legal basis in Community legislation, the Commission’s proposals have not, until today, met with any response and the anti-fraud sub-committee in the area of indirect taxation has found it impossible, in the words of the Commission “to achieve meaningful progress and cannot take the necessary decisions to improve the fight against fraud”. What is more serious than this is the fact that the Commission’s reports on VAT collection have been scandalously disregarded by the other institutions and have not been followed up to any degree by the Member States. Compliance with Article 280 of the Treaty, specifically where it requires the effective and equivalent protection of the Community’s financial interests will be dead letter unless we overcome the situation of there being a loophole in the law in the area of traditional own resources and VAT. The protection of the Community’s financial interests, and particularly those of the taxpayers, who comply, cannot continue to be disregarded when it comes to indirect taxation."@en1
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