Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2009-11-26-Speech-4-016"
| Predicate | Value (sorted: default) |
|---|---|
| rdf:type | |
| dcterms:Date | |
| dcterms:Is Part Of | |
| dcterms:Language | |
| lpv:document identification number |
"en.20091126.3.4-016"2
|
| lpv:hasSubsequent | |
| lpv:speaker | |
| lpv:spoken text |
"Mr President, I am sorry to dissent, but as an experienced accountant, I do not share my colleagues’ optimism about the opinion of the auditors.
The Court of Auditors’ annual report on the 2008 accounts shows no significant improvement. 10 years after the resignation of the Santer Commission, and many promises of reform, the EU’s funds continue to be out of control. The auditors state that the accounts are fair but fail to state that they are true, and indeed it is difficult to say they are true if they go on to express concern about the quality of the financial information.
The report reveals that, 10 years after the initiation of the administrative reform, the European Commission does not operate an integrated accounting system, and that directorates introduce transactions in their local systems, some of which have not even been blessed by the chief accountant of the European Commission. Moreover, on the legality and regularity of the EU expenditure, the auditors only cleared 9% of the expenses for the year 2008, a percentage similar to the past. They give an adverse opinion on 43% of the budget, the part that relates to cohesion funds, research, energy and transport, external aid, development and enlargement. For the remaining 48%, they give a qualified opinion.
Such a report would call for the resignation of the board of auditors of any company and its subsequent liquidation, but here nobody is worried. The auditors even identified an amount of EUR 1.5 billion that, in their own words, should not have been paid.
The first argument you will hear is that the auditors are not saying that it is fraud, but only errors. They will say that fraud requires criminal intent, and we have to prove this, and then we need to call the police.
The second argument that you will hear is that the rules are too complex. They have been saying this for years, but the rules have not changed, so should we then blame the European Commission for maintaining complex rules that encourage errors?
The third argument is that it is the member countries which should be blamed for the errors. Well, the treaties clearly specify that the European Commission is responsible for the management of the European Union funds, and in fact, it is the only body empowered to stop payments when it does not receive sufficient evidence that the funds are properly spent.
The fact is that these errors mean that taxpayers’ money has been abused. But, to be honest, nobody cares about this. It is just taxpayers’ money we are dealing with. It is only the money of people who are now struggling to pay their mortgages and educate their children. But all this is not enough. On top of the EUR 116 billion payments for the year 2008 that have been audited by the Court of Auditors, another EUR 40 billion has gone out of the European Union coffers. Thirty-five per cent of the budget is now hidden in a balance sheet account under the name of ‘Prefinancing’ and for which the auditors cannot tell the European taxpayers if it has been properly spent.
These additional advance payments have been made precisely in the areas where the Court of Auditors found the biggest number of errors. For how long is this Parliament going to allow taxpayers’ money to be abused?"@en1
|
| lpv:spokenAs | |
| lpv:unclassifiedMetadata | |
| lpv:videoURI |
Named graphs describing this resource:
The resource appears as object in 2 triples