Mr President, my first words clearly have to be congratulations to Mr Casaca for his report. Not only because of the document itself, but also for the preparatory work that went into it: finding a consensus, harmonising, exercising caution, and bringing all of this together in a report which, first and foremost, is complex. Complex because it is a follow-up report, in the strict sense of the term, while at the same time the subject matter is new and deals with something that shook us and which is now shaking public opinion. I would like to highlight a few elements of this follow-up aspect, such as the eagerness to implement fully the internal control standards, to complete an audit of the Commission’s treasury system, to introduce the payment of interest accrued in the case of Community advance payments, to address the question of recovery payments and also subjects which were already common currency in the Committee on Budgetary Control: the reform of the accounting system, for example, or the common agricultural policy – which is mentioned specifically by the rapporteur – and, above all, in relation to export refunds and the prevention of fraud in the sector. Nonetheless, as I said, this report marks a first: it is the first time the question of Eurostat has been dealt with in a report. We have been surprised by some of the questions which have come up in relation to this subject. Let me go through them. Firstly, the fact that the rules on exchanges of information, which have been in place since the beginning of this parliamentary term, have not been implemented. Secondly, it is surprising that there is no register of the owners of all the companies that have been awarded contracts and that apparently it would be virtually impossible to establish who is behind the companies participating in calls for tender issued by the Commission. So now, at this late stage, we still have our doubts about the scale of the problem and who is responsible. What is more, when we tried to contact certain sources, we encountered the incredibly valuable contribution of the auditors and the whistle-blowers, on the one hand, who filled the gaps in our knowledge about what had happened, and at the same time, we found a glaring lack of information from OLAF, which is what has led – as was stated in this House barely a month ago – to the call for regulatory reform. In particular, reform to prevent OLAF becoming a pretext for holding discussions about any given topic behind closed doors and reducing transparency. As regards the measures which have been adopted, I think they are constructive and useful. For example, the decision to establish a mechanism for information flows between the auditors in each Directorate General and the internal Audit Service, the desire to establish and give structure to each Commissioner’s responsibilities, to protect whistle-blowers from potential reprisals and a review of the early warning system – also known as the blacklist – to prevent companies that have behaved fraudulently or inefficiently in relation to the Commission from receiving further contracts and subsidies. In short, Mr President, this is an open report which also offers a link to the report on the approval of the financial management for 2002, which will provide an opportunity to evaluate some of the measures proposed in this report. It will also be the time when we will be able to plug certain gaps in our knowledge, which we hope will be filled in by OLAF.

Political group: PPE-DE