Brussels, 24/05/2000 (Agence Europe) - Raffaele Costa (EPP, Italian) announced in a press release that the EP Committee on Budgetary Control has taken a stance against European Commission discharge for the implementation of the MEDA programme (EU cooperation with Mediterranean countries) for the period 1995-1999, a period during which only EUR 897 million, "not even one quarter of the total" budget allocated, were spent. Mr Costa, who acknowledges that the Prodi Commission is not responsible for the management of those years, nonetheless denounces the lack of "transparency" shown by the European Commission. He affirms: "I have knocked a thousand times, in vain, at the doors of the Commission in order to know how the money had been spent. I had few answers, always contradictory and full of gaps. Two hours before today's session I was given a list of names, not always known, of those who shared out the EUR 987 million between them". Mainly noting that "several million were intended for the EIB, without one line of explanation", he complained: "it is always the same old song: it is said there is not enough staff, which is only partly true. The Commission wants to centralise the management of the programme more, and the number of officials in Brussels increases, whereas it is on the ground, in Africa, that action should be taken".