Mr President, Commissioner, in two days’ time in this House we will be addressing another weighty matter, the Annual Report of the Court of Auditors on the 1999 budget year, the first budget which covers, at least in part, the term of office of the new Commission. While, with this annual report, the new Commission will quite clearly be held accountable and will need to be reminded of its duty, the FAIR Programme is, as it were, unfinished business from a bygone era. The FAIR Programme – Fisheries, Agriculture and Agro-Industrial Research – was part of the fourth Framework Programme which ran from 1994 to 1998. In that time, a total of EUR 660 million of Community funds was spent on the FAIR Programme, admittedly a small amount when compared with the overall budget of the fourth Framework Programme of over EUR 11.8 billion, but an amount which is, nonetheless, worthy of investigation. I mentioned that the FAIR Programme investigated in the Court of Auditors’ special report was unfinished business from the past. One could argue that there was no need at all for Parliament to deal with these outdated issues any more, because – so people say – the new Commission is of course doing everything better in any case. However, I cannot accept such an argument. After all, as representatives of the people of Europe, we have a supervisory role which we must exercise so as to remain credible. Part of this is, of course, also ex post evaluation, even if, in this case, it has definitely come rather late. When I was drawing up my report, I held numerous conversations with both the Court of Auditors and the Commission, and I also brought all the parties together around one table. At this – what I would call – mini ‘trialogue’ there was an open and fair discussion. My questions were answered satisfactorily. All sides gave their honest opinions – in my view – without falling back on inflexible opposing positions. I observed a constructive atmosphere with the transparency and flexibility which is so often called for, and in no sense was it reminiscent of two armoured tortoises facing each other without saying a word. I believe that it is certainly possible to speak of a new culture of cooperation which was put into practice here for the first time. I would expressly thank the Court of Auditors and the Commission for this. The attitude of those being inspected towards their inspectors has taken a turn for the better. Inspections are, of course, not carried out for their own sake either, but to achieve an improvement. I would say that, at the end of the day, we are, of course, all acting in unison, the inspectors and those being inspected, and why? So as to ensure that European money is better deployed in the future. Overall then, this is a balanced and fairly argued report. Nevertheless, there are some points which are mentioned which I must criticise. However, at the same time, I would express the hope that the Commission will respect its commitments and that it has made the appropriate improvements in the fifth Framework Programme. What are my main criticisms? Firstly, the length of the overall inspection procedure. As it stands at the moment it is unacceptable. I say this quite clearly and you are aware of this. It is simply impossible that two full years should go by between the investigation beginning and the report being submitted to Parliament. Surely some relevance to the present situation has to be retained. This has nothing to do with carrying out the controls themselves, they take time, but it is to do with the contradictory procedure and possibly also with publication. There is therefore a need for action to be taken. A procedure urgently needs to be identified which will allow the special report to be published within a reasonable period of time. My question to the Commission in this regard highlighted some possibilities, but unfortunately no usable result has yet emerged. Given the importance of the research programme for agriculture and fisheries, it is regrettable that some problems were identified in connection with the organisation of the programme. For example, the descriptions of the selection criteria remain unclear and their application inconsistent, with the result that it was sometimes impossible to understand why projects had been selected for funding. In addition, there were mistakes in the certified expenditure and insufficient sanctions, as well as links between experts and some of the organisations involved in the research proposals which, in my view, need to be queried. Above all, however, it must be pointed out that the cooperation between the Directorates-General involved – Fisheries, Agriculture and Research – was unsatisfactory and needs to be more efficiently structured in the future. I nonetheless assume, not least with a view to my hobbyhorse of fisheries, that we will put pressure on all three of them together so that we can guarantee positive developments in the future.

Political group: PPE-DE