Mr President, allow me to begin with a brief flashback. Five years ago almost to the day, on 2 December 1998, this House held a heated debate here in Brussels with the former President of the Commission, Jacques Santer. With hindsight, this debate marked the beginning of the end of the former Commission. The issue then, as it is now, was combating fraud and the conclusions that the Commission needed to draw from several serious cases. At the time, the President of the Commission decided to head for a confrontation with Parliament. Against the declared will of this House, he wanted to move most of the responsibility for fighting fraud out of the Commission and into an external agency, on the grounds that this was the only way to guarantee the independence of investigations. We rejected this very firmly, because no one was able to tell us where this agency was supposed to derive its authority from and how the effectiveness of its work was supposed to be ensured. This fantasy of an external agency has resurfaced in recent months in connection with the debate on the Eurostat case, thankfully, it seems, at least only in the minds of a handful of senior officials in the Commission. The signals that we received from the President of the Commission, Mr Prodi, in Strasbourg in November pointed in another, more constructive direction. Today, a good five months before the Members of this House bid one another a final farewell and head for the campaign trail, it is a question of identifying what is feasible and tackling this together, so that on such a decisive issue as protecting the Union’s financial interests we do not have to go before our electorate empty-handed. I now turn to the individual points. My report makes it very clear that our prime concern is that OLAF is underperforming, something that was brought to light very dramatically by the Eurostat case. This is not the time to apportion blame, but if we note that of the 300 staff in OLAF fewer than 15, even on a generous count, are at present working on internal investigations in the institutions, then something has gone seriously wrong. If that is the case then this office is, to put it inelegantly, completely off the mark. A quick and radical change of course is required here. OLAF needs to focus its investigations on those areas in which the relevant bodies in the Member States either cannot or do not wish to intervene, that is on investigations within the institutions and on the expenditure that is managed directly by the Commission. My second point is respect for the fundamental rights of those involved in investigations. The OLAF Regulation is absolutely clear on this. I quote: ‘These investigations must be conducted ... with full respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms, in particular the principle of fairness, for the right of persons involved to express their views on the facts concerning them and for the principle that the conclusions of an investigation may be based solely on elements which have evidential value.’ We take it from the reports and opinions of the OLAF Supervisory Committee, but also from the Ombudsman’s reports, that this is where the greatest danger currently lies. In this respect, the regulation is quite simply being ignored by the Office’s investigators. I only have to remind you of the most recent example, the reprimand issued by the Ombudsman last week against OLAF in connection with the libelling of a journalist in public statements made by the Office. If the fundamental freedoms of those concerned are not respected then at the end of the day the results of the investigations are also worthless, and I fear that, as a result, OLAF still has some nasty surprises in store in connection with Eurostat. What is lacking is an effective and above all preventive monitoring mechanism to enforce the provisions of the regulation. This is an area where we need to take countermeasures by amending the regulation itself. We do not wish to touch the Director’s decision-making powers, but we need a stronger counterbalance. This counterbalance is the OLAF Supervisory Committee, but on three conditions: firstly, that the amendment concerned explicitly confers upon it the power to ensure that the fundamental freedoms and rights of those involved in investigations are respected; secondly, that it receives the additional resources to enable it to carry out this task, and thirdly, last but not least, that it has greater independence from the Director of OLAF, not only by increasing the number of staff in the Committee’s secretariat, but also by removing it from the organisational framework of both OLAF and the Commission. Targeting resources on investigative activities and stepping up the monitoring of these investigative activities are the key points that now need to be addressed where OLAF is concerned. Ladies and gentlemen, I believe that we have done our work well in the committee. We are fulfilling our responsibilities to our electorate and to the Union’s taxpayers. I therefore commend this report to the House. (Applause)

Political group: PSE