Mr President, Commissioner, thanks to the dedicated hard work of the Committee on Budgetary Control, and that of various individuals in the European institutions, it has finally been possible to put a stop to serious wrongdoing in the European statistics body, Eurostat. The audit carried out by the Commission’s internal audit service, and by Eurostat’s audit department, deserves our praise and was crucial in obtaining this result. The action plan presented by the committee, aimed at concentrating on the most important statistics, at reducing the amount of work outsourced by the institute and at making statistical data available to the public, addresses our main concerns. It also ensures that the motivation for such work is not purely commercial and increases transparency and responsibility. We shall, however, carefully monitor how this plan is executed and how all the work carried out is revised and audited. Community institutions will be increasingly concerned with analysing and auditing the effectiveness and the simplification of procedures, the quality of work, and the relevance and value of the matters concerned. In any event, it is now obvious that the current process of reform of the Commission has not sufficiently clarified the relative responsibilities of the Directors-General and the Commissioners and has given no guarantees of respect for the golden rule of democracy: that accountability and ultimate responsibility rest with political office-holders. Concerns have surfaced regarding the manner in which we have proceeded unchecked towards outsourcing a wide variety of EU administrative functions and in which more complexity has been introduced, due to the implementation of more bureaucratic rules, which are a long way from fulfilling the aims of public spending efficiency. These concerns are not, however, confined to Eurostat. It is clear that in most contracts awarded by Eurostat to third parties, other Commission departments or even interinstitutional bodies were also involved. There is particular consternation that, unlike Eurostat, nothing appears to have changed in the departments that monitor external help and that are responsible for authorising spending in some of the most contentious areas. The accounting system must be modernised and assurances must be given that the system is indeed capable of addressing the most glaring problems in managing and monitoring external contracts and Community money administered by third parties. A further area in which progress appears to have been either very slow or non-existent is that of the common agricultural policy. The framework drawn up by the excellent special reports by the Court of Auditors regarding export refunds is a cause for concern. It is unacceptable that, on key points, the 2003 report does no more than repeat what was said in 1990 because absolutely nothing has changed in 13 years. It is unacceptable that the Commission has not yet implemented its policy of moving irresponsible employees in the area of export refunds, when this is an area in which urgent action is required. It is unacceptable that export refunds for sugar continue to be awarded to countries from which we import sugar that is duty-free. The Community budget demands transparency, yet the Commission still refuses to make public the list of payments made to commercial undertakings, particularly in this area of export refunds and surplus disposal mechanisms. In a recent opinion poll, food product adulteration came top of the list of concerns among European citizens, both in the Europe of the 15 and the Europe of the 25. The Commission, however, continues to neglect its duties in this area. Community money finances extensive operations to count olive trees and evaluate their productive capacity, an activity that is neither worthwhile nor effective, while it neglects the fight against the adulteration of olive oil. The budget imposes heavy fines on farmers who produce more than their quota of milk, yet the Commission refuses to intervene when large European commercial undertakings sell, and receive EU subsidies for, surplus butter adulterated with lubricants and beef tallow. To conclude, I should like to say a word about the challenges facing us. The Commission is preparing to propose an increase in the sums earmarked for research and development, an area which, as I have said, has been synonymous with red tape and inefficiency. If the mindset in this area does not change radically, if it does not streamline its underlying philosophy, if it persists with the unwieldy mechanisms it has used to date, the Commission will transform a good idea into bad policy.

Political group: PSE