C 225/8
EN
Official Journal of the European Union
27.6.2023
29.
To properly carry out the monitoring tasks conferred upon it by the OLAF Regulation, the Committee must have access to meaningful, comprehensive, sufficient and timely information.
The new Article 15(1) of the Regulation (EU, Euratom) No 883/2013 (9) provides that the Committee should be granted access to all of OLAF’s information and documents that it considers necessary to carry out its monitoring and supervisory tasks. 30.
The current working arrangements agreed between OLAF and the Committee (10) provide the Committee with partial direct access to case-related information available and registered in OLAF’s case management system (OCM).
In particular, according to Article 13(2) of the working arrangements, the Committee must have full access to open investigations lasting for longer than 12 months. 31.
In that regard, as every year, the Committee received information from OLAF on investigations lasting more than 12 months.
To better understand why certain investigations last a long time, the Committee focused its attention on OLAF investigations lasting more than 36 months.
3.2.1.
Reports of investigations lasting over 12 months received by the Committee in 2022 32.
If an investigation cannot be closed within 12 months after its opening, Article 7(8) of the OLAF Regulation (11) requires the Director-General of OLAF to formally report to the Committee 12 months after the investigation has opened and every 6 months thereafter.
In these reports, OLAF sets out the reasons for the investigation remaining open and, where appropriate (12), the remedial measures to be taken to speed up the investigation and the expected timeframe for completion. 33.
In 2022, the Committee received 751 reports from OLAF relating to 467 ongoing individual investigations lasting over 12 months.
54,17 % of the reported cases exceeded 24 months (Figure 1).
The sectoral breakdown of OLAF investigations is provided in Figure 2.
Figure 1
(9) (10) (11) (12)
As modified by Regulation (EU, Euratom) 2020/2223.
The working arrangements between OLAF and the Supervisory Committee of OLAF are available at https://supervisory-committeeolaf.europa.eu/system/files/2021-10/OLAF%20SC%20WA%20signed.pdf.pdf Article 7(8) Regulation (EU, Euratom) No 883/2013 states: ‘If an investigations cannot be closed within 12 months after it has been opened, the Director General shall, at the expiry of the 12-month period and every six months thereafter, report to the Supervisory Committee, indicating the reasons and the remedial measures envisaged with a view to speeding up the investigation.’
The wording ‘where appropriate’ was added to the text of Article 7(8) of the OLAF Regulation by amending Regulation (EU, Euratom) 2020/2223.