MEPs claim victory over EU fraud office

Date: 08/10/1998

By Simon Coss

MEPS from across the political spectrum are savouring their victory over the European Commission following a pledge from President Jacques Santer to consider setting up an independent EU fraud office.

Santer told a packed Strasbourg hemicycle earlier this week that he would look into transferring some of the powers now held by the Commission's in-house anti-fraud unit, UCLAF, to a fully independent fraud investigation office.

“If it is the case that because UCLAF is located within our structure it has the effect that the Commission's fight against fraud is questioned, even denigrated, then I would prefer to move UCLAF's investigative functions outside,” he said.

The president's statement pleased MEPs who have long been calling for such action, insisting that the Commission should not be allowed to investigate its own officials.

Edward McMillan-Scott, leader of the British Conservatives in the Parliament, heralded the move as a victory for his party's persistence in pressing for UCLAF to become a fully independent unit.

Other political groups also welcomed Santer's announcement as a move in the right direction, with German Green MEP Edith Müller describing it as “a good step, a necessary step”.

But MEPs made it clear they had no intention of letting the Commission president off the hook completely over the fraud issue. They are still threatening to embarrass the Commission by refusing to 'discharge' its accounts for 1996 because of their concerns over the way it has handled internal investigations in the past.

Müller in particular reacted furiously to Santer's suggestion that instances of serious mismanagement by the European Community Humanitarian Office (ECHO) between 1993 and 1995 amounted to “administrative acrobatics”.

“The falsification of contracts, invented reports and disappearing documents are seen by the Commission as administrative acrobatics,” she said. Müller insisted that the Commissioner responsible for ECHO at the time, Spain's Manuel Marín, should have resigned as soon as he found out what was happening. “The idea of personal responsibility has been completely lost within the Commission,” she said.

British MEP Pauline Green, leader of the Parliament's Socialist Group, also criticised the way the Commission carried out fraud enquiries. “There are habits which need to change within the Commission. There is still no transparency in decision-making which would allow the Parliament to measure scandals linked to bad administration and bad management,” she said.

However the Socialists did not support calls from the centre-right European People's Party (EPP) to freeze funds allocated to ECHO for next year until the Commission provides MEPs with more information on past problems.

One spokesman described the EPP's suggestion as “using a sledgehammer to crack a nut”.