18
Jan
2023
Watch
Protection of the EU’s financial interests - combating fraud - annual report 2021 (debate)
Madam President. If we want to protect European money effectively, we need to improve a lot of things. I'm going to mention two that are less talked about than they deserve. Firstly, transparency. Let's start publishing all contracts with public administration in the Union, as Slovakia, for example, does. At the same time, we also need to control who benefits from public contracts as the beneficial owner. This is recommended, for example, by the World Bank in the 2020 Anti-Fraud Report or also by the International Monetary Fund in the 2022 Handbook on Ownership Control. Second, we need to measure results, not outputs. It is not enough to measure the number of kilometers of roads built. If the result does not improve the flow of traffic, reduce travel time or reduce the number of accidents, then we have probably invested inefficiently. And even in the best system, there will be failures. And it is difficult and expensive to detect and correct them. It is more effective to detect and correct failures in the system.