Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-11-15-Speech-2-018"
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"en.20051115.6.2-018"2
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".
Mr President, this debate is kick-starting the 2004 discharge procedure. An initial cursory reading of the annual report tells us that the Commission has organised itself more effectively since the fall of the Santer Commission and since the start of the reform process. The good news is that spending of the European budget has improved for the third year running. The bad news is that, for the eleventh time in succession, the Court of Auditors has failed to issue a positive Statement of Assurance (DAS). There is therefore no certainty about the reliability of the figures.
The reason is clear: the monitoring and control systems have either not yet been implemented, or they are ineffective, or the payments show up errors of significant importance. We are talking about the agricultural and structural policy, as well as the internal and external policy, which involve more than 4/5 of the entire European budget of 105 billion. A central problem in this connection is that 80 to 85% of the management and supervision is shared with the Member States. The Finance Ministers refuse to accept their part of the responsibility in this respect, which is an absolute disgrace. They want money from Brussels, but not the accountability that goes with it.
Once again, the annual report calls attention to the problem of export restitutions which account for EUR 3.6 billion, or 7.5% of the agricultural budget. In terms of value, though, they account for 26% of the irregularities reported to the Commission. The Member States should physically check 5% of the export restitution dossiers, but they fail miserably in that respect too. I was pleased to see that point 4.30 and note 20 of the annual report contained the recommendation to have the inspection take place at the level of the final beneficiaries, and I quote: ‘such a reach would form a stronger and clearer chain in terms of accountability for CAP spending.’
That is why I would make another urgent plea to make the lists of final beneficiaries public. That is precisely what Estonia, Denmark, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands did. Flanders and Belgium, on the other hand, opted for mock transparency by lumping all the figures together, which made proper analysis impossible. We can, however, learn a great deal from those tables in terms of anomalies in our agricultural policy. For example, over the past five years, Philip Morris, the tobacco giant, has received EUR 6.5 million in the Netherlands for adding sugar to cigarettes. Given the high sugar price at EU level, Philip Morris has been compensated for this.
Similarly, the KLM catering service received EUR 646 000, because it uses sugar, dairy products, vegetables and fruit on flights outside of the European Union. They are considered as exports and are therefore eligible for export restitution aid. Surely that is too crazy for words, but it is only the tip of the iceberg. Europe, the European Union and the European agricultural policy will be acceptable to its citizens only if these excrescences are addressed. I wish all rapporteurs in the discharge procedure, and particularly Mr Mulder, much success and I hope that in the next few months, we will be able to carry out our work effectively and issue sound discharge reports in the April part-session next year."@en1
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