Brussels, 08/10/2002 (Agence Europe) - In an effort to scotch the rumours going round, the Director General of DG Budget at the European Commission and the Commission accountant gave a press conference on Tuesday. Rumours are particularly centred around the proposals of Marta Andreasen, the former Commission accountant relieved of her functions in May. Disciplinary proceedings have been begun against this official accused of not having done her job and who has accused the Commission of having an accounting system and financial regulation that is so unreliable that it is open to all kinds of fraud.
The Director General and the new accountant have made a report on the system and the reform that is being taken. This reform aims to establish a fully integrated accounting system and had been requested by the Court of Auditors. Director General, Luis Romero declared that this reform should allow the accountability problems between the two systems to be shored up until 2005 in the system currently being used and the problems so far revealed have not been too serious and have been dealt with. He explained that according to a study carried out by the OECD in 2001 in 30 countries, only three countries had fully integrated systems. "I think we will discover cases of fraud…There are cases of fraud because we have complex systems and we can find ways of dealing with them, but I don't think that there is a link between accounting and fraud". Luis Romero refused to comment on information that appeared in the German newspaper the Stern, according to which an auditor from the Court of Auditors had discovered a difference of more than EUR 100 million between the money in the Community budget available for the Phare programme and the money effectively pout into the account. He explained that this involved an auditor's note and not the position of the Court, the proceedings were still ongoing, he pointed out.
Last Friday, Ms Andreasen sent a letter to members of the EP Budgetary Control Committee in which she insisted that the committee meet her. On 30 September, the committee decided that before Ms Andreasen addressed it, she should first submit her suggestions in writing to the European Parliament so that the latter could decide whether her accusations were serious (see EUROPE 2 October p 15). In her letter, Ms Andreasen explains that, "given that most members of the budgetary control committee are not trained accountants, it is logical that they have not understood the scale of the reservations expressed by the Court of Auditors over the last seven years". She also asserts that the situation is "worse" than that indicated by the Court. She will be travelling to Ireland during the week of 14 October, before the referendum on the Treaty of Nice on 19 October.