Brussels, 14/06/2016 (Agence Europe) - On Tuesday 14 June, the budgetary control committee of the European Parliament approved the compromise between the institutions of the EU on the proposal to ensure that the secretariat of the supervisory committee of the European anti-fraud office (OLAF) is provided in the future by the European Commission rather than by OLAF itself (see EUROPE 11569).
Ingeborg Grässle (Germany), the chair of the Parliament's budgetary control committee, is the rapporteur on this dossier. The aim of the proposal is to guarantee the independence of OLAF's supervisory committee.
The members of this committee also held talks the day before on OLAF's 2015 report (see EUROPE 11563). Several MEPs said that they needed more information to be able to assess the effectiveness and credibility of the procedures. They called for clarification on the average duration of an investigation, the number of cases rejected, cases before the courts and how OLAF's recommendations are implemented.
Giovanni Kessler, the director of OLAF, reported an increase in the number of complex cross-border crimes, for which investigations take longer, because, for instance, OLAF does not have access to bank data. He stressed that between 75% and 80% of the cases were rejected, but that there had been twice as many cases over the last four years. In 47% of cases, OLAF's recommendations are not set in place, he acknowledged, stressing that OLAF was going to try to understand why.
Julia Pitera (EPP, Poland), rapporteur on the 2015 OLAF report, pointed out that the supervisory committee did not have access to the documents it needed to perform its oversight function. “This problem has been flagged out by the supervisory committee since 2012 and needs to be addressed”, she added. (Original version in French by Lionel Changeur)