Strasbourg, 27/10/2006 (Agence Europe) - The European Parliament is calling for greater openness and tougher action to recover wrongly paid EU funding. Adopting an own initiative report by Paulo Casaca (PES, Portugal) in Strasbourg on 24 October on recovery of Community funds, the European Parliament urged the European Commission to publish the identity of recipients and the amounts of fraudulent and irregular EU funding to be repaid to the EU budget. MEPs also expressed concern at the long-windedness of legal proceedings in the adulterated butter case (Italburro).
The EP welcomes the European Commission's decision to divulge the names of recipients of irregular or fraudulent EU funding and the amount of money received, as suggested in the EU transparency initiative, but regrets that this does not cover information on the actual recovery of unduly paid EU funding. MEPs urge the Commission to publish the identities and amounts of EU funding still to be recovered. The EP hails the three recovery proposals unveiled by the European Commission as part of the 2002 reform of the Financial Regulation, namely recognition of the privileged nature of debts owed to the EU on the grounds of equivalence to Member States' tax debts; a five-year deadline for recovery of sums owed to the Community, subject naturally to the possibility of prolonging the deadline where active steps are being taken to secure recovery; and making sums owed to the EU equivalent to sums owed in the civil sphere.
Adulterated butter. The EP expresses concern that seven years after the outbreak of the 'Italburro' adulterated butter scandal (a French/Italian/Belgian scandal involving the sale of 16,000 tonnes of adulterated butter mixed with beef suet and fats used in the cosmetics industry, see EUROPE 7753 and 7868) that less than 0.1% of the estimated amount of the fraud has been recovered; 'the action of the Italian authorise, thanks to which it was possible to dismantle the criminal network, bring dozens of perpetrators to justice, confiscate hundred of tonnes of adulterated products and collect proofs of trafficking in tens of thousands of tonnes of adulterated butter sent to other Member States, has had almost no follow-up and the level of EU cooperation has been particularly disappointing, if not non-existent'; 'public health has been neglected, with no-one to date having analysed the possible contamination of the butter by the use of substances prohibited for food products in the wake of the BSE crisis'; and different Member States use different, incompatible procedures (trafficking is a crime in some countries and a simple administrative problem in others).
European Public Prosecutor. The EP believes the 'creation of the office of European Public Prosecutor will be a decision of major importance, since it will facilitate direct access to the national public prosecutors' offices'. To improve the situation in the immediate future, the EP recommends coordinating Member States' public prosecutors' offices to reduce the workload of OLAF (the EU's anti-fraud unit) and protect the Community's financial interests. The EP also believes 'that the possibility of closer cooperation with Eurojust and Europol needs to be explored' (closer cooperation with OLAF). (lc)