Parliament seeks to boost anti-fraud office’s powers

Date: 27/04/2000

By Gareth Harding

MEPS are expected to adopt a far-reaching set of recommendations designed to boost the EU's ability to combat fraud next month, in a bid to cut down on €1 billion of Union funds which are wasted every year.

A report adopted by the European Parliament's budget control committee last week states that responsibility for deciding whether officials should be made financially liable for lost funds should no longer be left to internal European Commission bodies.

Instead, it argues, the task should

be handed over to a newly-created chamber for budgetary discipline in the European Court of Auditors.

The report also calls for the EU's anti-fraud office - known by its French acronym OLAF - to be given extensive new powers. As a first step towards creating a fully-fledged European public-prosecutor's office, it urges the Commission to draw up a proposal to extend OLAF's remit to allow for the early appointment of such a public prosecutor by the end of June.

The Commission favours such a move and is currently working on a paper which would change the EU treaty to cater for this, but many member states remain opposed to the idea.

Austrian Socialist MEP Herbert Bösch, author of the Parliament's report on the fight against fraud in 1998, also says that, in future, OLAF should make greater efforts to investigate irregularities relating to the EU's regional funds. His report also laments the fact that the European Central Bank and the European Investment Bank have refused to open their doors to OLAF investigators.

The Parliament has been critical of OLAF's staffing policy in the past, arguing that priority should be given to appointing experienced inspectors and prosecutors rather than officials transferred from other Commission departments. A controversial amendment adopted by the budget control committee demands that all staff currently working for the fraud office should be made to reapply for their jobs.

The committee's wide-ranging demands are further proof of the Parliament's determination to keep up its anti-fraud crusade. Earlier this month, MEPs voted to delay signing off the EU's 1998 budget in an attempt to squeeze further commitments from the Commission in uncovering evidence of irregularities.

The assembly called on the Union executive to provide MEPs with a list of alleged fraud and corruption cases within the institution by mid-May. They also urged the Commission to sign up to year-on-year targets for reducing errors in the EU's budget.

However, Budget Commissioner Michaele Schreyer took the sting out of the Parliament's attack by agreeing to most of its demands. 'This Commission has nothing to hide; it considers itself bound to Parliament in the performance of its duties,' she said.