Mr President, the discharge which we are discussing today, as far as agriculture is concerned, pertains to 1993, 1994 and 1995 and you may well wonder why we are so late. The reason for this is that we delayed the discharge for 1992 for a long time, because we had made certain requirements of the Commission which up to last year it had failed to meet. We are pleased to note that this has meanwhile been rectified. So what exactly were Parliament’s requirements? Firstly, we asked for 15 extra jobs to be created in the inspection department within agriculture and for the financial corrections to be increased from 10% to 25% maximum, in case something went wrong with agricultural expenditure. This has since been done and we are grateful for this. It still causes Parliament some concern that the jobs have not yet been filled and that it is extremely difficult to do so. In general terms, the error rate for agriculture is below the general error rate for the budget. Where the general rate is 5%, as already mentioned, that for agriculture is 3%. This is moving in the right direction. This may also partly be due to the fact that agricultural policy has changed over the years. I believe it is easier to keep income policy in check than it is price policy. There has since been an increase in expenditure for development within rural areas but I will come back to this. Special attention should also be paid to the European revenue. Although the own resources are falling, they are still an important source of income and it has now been decided that certain Member States are allowed to retain 25%. This is all the more reason why the Commission should keep tabs on all the money coming in to which the European Union is entitled. What does the Committee on Budgets mainly want? First, the Commission should work towards driving back the current error rate within the short term. In my opinion, we should be able to have a 1% error rate within a number of years. One way of achieving this is to establish an estimated reliability level for each sector. This is something which the Commission could undertake itself. What is the error rate in the milk sector, the dairy sector, the cereal sector, etc? In this way, the various offices will benefit from a healthy rivalry. Everyone wants to outstrip the others and agriculture would be able to take the wind out of the sails of the other budget components. For many years, we have also talked about an integrated management and inspection system for agriculture and lamented the fact that many countries are still unable to meet this requirement. I think it is about time this stopped. We have stipulated in the resolution that the Commission will have two years to solve this and I have been given assurances that this should be possible. Although the agricultural budget components are scrutinised, they cannot be scrutinised in the same way as guaranteed expenditure, which is down to the Guidance Section for agriculture. We think the Commission should come up with proposals to actually apply the financial corrections system to structural expenditure for agriculture. In common with the Court of Auditors, the Commission is also concerned that huge mistakes are still being made in the export refunds system. The Committee on Budgets, therefore, recommends discharge. There are, however, a few problems remaining, one of which I have already mentioned, namely export refunds. We are expecting a report on this. We are also waiting for a report from OLAF on fraud involving the aid provided to flax in certain countries, notably Spain. Finally, and I may come back to this at a later stage, we are waiting for a report from the Court of Auditors on the Fléchard affair. We can grant discharge to the Commission without these three elements. There is something else. Since 1995, there has been a conciliation committee for agricultural expenditure. If there is a difference of opinion between the Member States and the Commission on the financial correction to be imposed, we can call upon a conciliation body to mediate. We have as yet to be convinced of the usefulness of this conciliation body. The Commission has promised to assess this. We look forward to the findings because we would like to considerably reduce the number of court cases at the Court of Justice in Luxembourg.

Political group: ELDR