WRITTEN QUESTION P-0633/97 by Joan Colom i Naval (PSE) to the Commission (21 February 1997)

Subject: Fraud in the cereals and olive oil sectors

On Thursday, 13 February 1997 the well-known newsletter of the respected Agence Europe news agency published, on pages 4 and 5 of the English edition, a number of statements in quotation marks which are attributed to Mr Franz Fischler, Member of the Commission, in which, referring to the CMO for olive oil, he claimed that 'abuses are ten times greater than in other sectors, like cereals'.

Given that these statements, published in a newsletter with a wide circulation, have not been refuted or even corrected by the person concerned or by the Commission services and given that the recently reformed CMO for cereals has more than doubled its budget appropriations between 1993 and 1995, which now exceed ECU 16 000 million, more than 10 times the cost to the budget of the CMO for olive oil, can the Commission provide the estimates on which the Commissioner based his statements, since they do not correspond with the data published by the Court of Auditors nor with those provided by the Commission to Parliament's Committee on Budgetary Control?

Answer given by Mr Fischler on behalf of the Commission (25 March 1997)

The statements to which the Honourable Member refers were based on a comparison of the amounts of European Agricultural Guidance and Guarantee Fund (EAGGF) Guarantee Section expenditure declared by the Member States for the 1995 financial year with the amounts involved in the cases of irregularities under the EAGGF Guarantee Section officially communicated by the Member States in the same year. These irregularities are the subject of a quarterly communication to the Commission, pursuant to the provisions of Council Regulation (EEC) No 595/91 ((OJ L 67, 14.3.1991. )) of 4 March 1991 concerning irregularities and the recovery of sums wrongly paid in connection with the financing of the common agricultural policy and the organization of an information system in this field and repealing Regulation (EEC) No 283/72. In the year in question, the percentage of irregular expenditure in the case of olive oil was 4.31 % (total expenditure ECU 812 million, irregular expenditure ECU 35 million) while in the case of cereals, the figure was 0.42 % (total expenditure ECU 9 363 million, irregularities communicated ECU 39 million).

However, olive oil expenditure declared under the EAGGF Guarantee Section for the 1995 financial year was exceptionally low, which was a direct consequence of the amendment of Article 12b of Commission Regulation (EEC) No 3061/84 ((OJ L 288, 1.1.1984. )) of 31 October 1984 laying down detailed rules for the application of the system of the production aid for olive oil by Commission Regulation (EEC) No 3062/94 ((OJ L 323, 16.12.1994. )) of 15 December 1994 amending Regulation (EEC) No 3061/84 laying down detailed rules for the application of the system of production aid for olive oil. That amendment changed the dates for payment of production aid for olive oil with effect from the 1994/95 marketing year. Moreover, in that year the amounts involved in the cases of cereals irregularities communicated by the Member States were relatively small. For the six years from 1990 to 1995, the percentage of irregular expenditure for olive oil was 2.08 % (total expenditure ECU 9 895 million, irregular expenditure ECU 206 million and for cereals 1.13 % (total expenditure ECU 37 489 million, irregularities communicated ECU 422 million).