Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, I would firstly like to congratulate the rapporteur on the work that he has carried out. I would, however, also like to stress the pitfalls that might have been encountered along the way, as Mr Bösch has had to deal with the vague desires harboured by various members of the Committee on Budgetary Control, who wanted to refocus the report on previous cases and Treaties, which are also dealt with in other documents. In relation to this, I do not share the view of the speakers who say that the Fléchard case is the main case in the discharge. It probably is if you consider the time and energy that the Commission and ourselves had to spend on it, but it is definitely not in terms of importance. I shall, however, focus my attention on the problem of fraud and irregularities. In a previous report, the Committee on Budgetary Control stated that the slightest fraud of the Community budget must no longer be tolerated. Whilst this call for zero tolerance is extremely laudable, we cannot disregard the fact that putting this into practice requires very significant resources in terms of personnel which is going to be difficult to achieve, given the huge numbers of schemes currently underway, and given the great diversity of the territories in which we have a presence. In this report, it was proposed to remove the distinction between fraud and irregularities, which would be justified by the fact that, when these are detected, we do not know whether the cases in question are likely to lead to criminal prosecution. I would like to express my concern about this position, for which I have two reasons. On the one hand, we must ensure that our fight against fraud does not anticipate the conclusions of inquiries that various bodies are undertaking. On the other hand, we would be running the risk of discrediting the European Union’s policies within the European Union itself if we announce levels of fraud in criminal cases that are much higher than reality shows them to be. Quite the contrary, I think that we must make a concerted effort to present the fairest possible picture of these criminal acts, since it is impossible to treat problems related to small administrative mistakes and large scale organised fraud in the same way. I support what Mr Mulder has just said regarding a classification of irregularities. In the same spirit, we must focus our work on cases of fraud that require us to become immediately involved in following them up because of their scale and topical interest. In relation to this, several speakers have mentioned the case of the adulterated butter. The Commission must be in a position to help us to achieve our aim. I would say, however, that I regret the attitude of the Commission, which sometimes takes too long to answer or provides unsatisfactory answers to the European Parliament’s requests. The European Commission and the European Parliament should work together more closely in combating fraud. This does not mean, however, that the European Parliament has to give up its power to penalise the Commission when it does not fulfil its duties, particularly with regard to protecting the European Union’s financial interests. This cooperation is needed because it involves our credibility in the eyes of the citizens of Europe who have put their trust in us.

Political group: PSE