Speeches

Madam President, Commissioner, dear EIB - let me just say this on the whole - dear EIB team! Dear Vice-President, I am very pleased that you are with us. And I am very happy that we can have this discussion again today. At the outset, I would like to expressly join the Commissioner and send my warmest condolences to Ukraine, because this is already a dramatic process, and we see every day how people suffer from bombing and horrific circumstances. Therefore, also from the point of view of the EPP, the warmest condolences to Ukraine and our sympathy. Back to the EIB: The EIB did not have the easiest starting point in 2021 and had to deal with the impact of the pandemic, and the crises have not diminished since then. Every day a new crisis, I almost said, every day a new requirement and every day a new problem. This is, of course, not an easy situation for a bank like the EIB, put together as a multilateral construct. I would like to thank the EIB for being a strong partner in the field of health, in particular for signing €5.4 billion in loans for health projects in 2021. It is very important that we significantly boost Europe's location in terms of health, competitiveness, non-dependence on third countries and the ability to provide for ourselves, and the EIB plays a special role in this regard. I would also like to thank you for providing funding, in particular, for medical infrastructure in the field of research, vaccines and treatments. BioNTech/Pfizer was also one of the projects that contributed to this. And the EIB was the first multilateral bank to invest in it. Therefore, a heartfelt thank you for this farsightedness. From the point of view of budgetary control, they have also entered into a partnership with EPPO, which I think is very important. From the point of view of the Committee on Budgetary Control, this is not a criticism of the EIB, but an urgent request to the Commission: We have a large number of small and medium-sized enterprises in the field of space research in particular, and there has already been criticism in calls for tenders that the Commission repeatedly cooperates only with large companies. The EIB needs guarantees to provide financing to innovative small and medium-sized enterprises. I therefore urge the Commission to make up for this. Because not only the big ones are our salvation, but, as you have seen in BioNTech, you also need the small ones.

Madam President, dear Commissioner, dear Minister, dear colleagues! I have been here in this European Parliament since 2009, and over the years I have noticed – dear Mr Verhofstadt, you are here even longer than I am – that there are always national vetoes on certain precarious files and that there are always long, long, long delays because a Member State crosses paths. In terms of foreign policy, this is extremely precarious when I look at the fact that we have now had the case of Hungary, which, in order to adequately override the conditionality mechanism for itself in the country and to be able to undermine the standards that the Commission rightly demands, is trying to blackmail the Council that it will only get its aid to Ukraine if the Hungarians have to apply, as it were, less rule of law standards. I have to say: I cannot express enough my outrage that a Member State of the European Union and Viktor Orbán are trying to do this at all, because help for Ukraine is simply absolutely necessary and internal domestic questions and questions about the rule of law must have nothing to do with the ability to act in foreign policy. Congratulations to the Czech Presidency that you managed to use the conditionality mechanism for the first time ever in a difficult tightrope act and still find a solution. We will have many more questions to answer. In terms of foreign policy, we finally need to be able to act without the need for unanimity.

Mr President, Mr President of the Court of Auditors, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen! Before I officially start speaking, on behalf of the Committee on Budgetary Control, I would like to warmly congratulate Tony Murphy for having been elected President and wish him good luck and success for the difficult tasks that lie ahead of him and his entire team of the Court of Auditors. We look forward to further cooperation, as this annual report is again an important basis for the discharge. I am pleased that Jan Gregor has come along as the main contributor to this report and can now limit myself to the focus that I have as rapporteur, because then the second part of the Commission budget will be taken over by Mr Jeroen Lenaers as rapporteur and, of course, by the corresponding shadow rapporteurs. On the subject of RRF: The Commissioner knows my questions, which have now been raised very clearly for the Committee on Budgetary Control, and I am grateful that at least DG BUDG is showing some movement in relation to what the Committee on Budgetary Control is concerned about. The first concern is: We have so-called Milestones and Targets. However, they are formulated in such a general way that you have far-reaching leeway in their satisfactory fulfilment. What is satisfactory or not satisfactory is de facto not verifiable for us. What is the standard for satisfactory? There is also no methodology if anyone – any state – now has five Milestones not fulfilled. How important or not important are they? What percentage will be deducted from the payout? So far, nothing is deducted, but everything is paid out, and the methodology does not yet exist. We would like to call for this very clearly as a Committee on Budgetary Control. In the second place: There is a problem that there is no clear correlation between the amount of payment instalments and the amount to be fulfilled. Milestones and Targets. Then there is also the big problem that the Member States should actually submit lists for projects and measures, but these lists for projects and measures are not available to Parliament and also not available to the Court of Auditors in this form, which may be able to take a look individually, but the lists are not available. This means that there is no possibility for Parliament, both for specialised committees and for the Committee on Budgetary Control, to check whether the projects are successful, whether they are right, where the money has gone. It can't be that we're content to say we're spending the money, but we don't really know where it's going.

Mr President! Today is a somewhat amazing day for me. Normally, the left and green sides of this House are very quick to write resolutions. But when it comes to an opposition leader coming from the conservative side, it's suddenly all harmless, all uncomplicated. Then suddenly what is the principle of a rule of law, Commissioner, namely that one must have arrest warrants, that one must also involve public prosecutors, that one must involve judges, that not simply police can arbitrarily arrest opposition leaders on the orders of the Prime Minister and the Minister of the Interior, becomes obsolete. This is usually known from communist states, from fascist states, but please not from democratic states. We also do not want to introduce this standard, and please apply it to every government. I did not hear anything about that today, Commissioner. I've heard abstract things that I'd like everyone to endorse and that I'd like to take a closer look at. But what I don't think is okay is: No matter how one stands with Boyko Borisov, no matter how one stands with a previous government, no matter how one stands politically, no matter what is not possible: I notice that a prime minister, including his interior minister, had also personally announced to me that they wanted to make even more competences for the police with similar arrests in other areas. Normally, the political left calls it a police state. We don't want police states. If it is announced that perhaps all Bulgarian parties agree with each other, they could carry out a judicial reform together, for which, incidentally, a two-thirds majority is needed in Bulgaria. That is, Borisov alone could not have changed anything. You need a two-thirds majority, so the parties must agree with each other, and reforms must be decided and implemented together. But this one-sidedness of action! Commissioner, it cannot be said that the Commission was so behind. The position of the competent policy coordinator Not even occupied in rule of law matters for more than two years. That is, the attention was not given.

Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen! I can speak today on behalf of Petri Sarvamaa, who unfortunately cannot be here and who wanted to address two special aspects. First of all, thank you very much for this year's report on the rule of law. We are glad that it has become a bit more precise this year, which is very important for us. From the point of view of the Committee on Budgetary Control, we now know that the conditionality mechanism has been triggered for the first time. However, it would be very important for us to see that the future Rule of Law Report also includes an assessment of the fulfilment of the various conditions laid down by law in the Conditionality Mechanism and that we can analyse them in it, as well as an assessment of the measures taken by the Member States to solve the problems addressed by the Commission. Furthermore, it would be important to make a clear distinction between individual problems and systemic problems – I still lack the very clear distinction. It may be that at some point in a Member State a mistake or a specific tradition is not necessarily great, but it is not a fundamental problem, while for others there are real systemic problems that run across the whole administration and across the funding and across the state. Then you have to make the differences clear.

Madam President, Mr President, dear Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen! First of all, a heartfelt thank you to Olivier Chastel and to the shadow rapporteurs for the really very fair and very good way of working together in the context of the Commission's discharge. The point I am most concerned about in the Commission's discharge – I want to choose a different focus this year – is the issue of public procurement, single bidder, manipulation of public procurement and the reliability of Member State authorities. There are significant deficits in certain countries. And I would like to draw the Commission's attention to the fact that Mr Eickhout has just raised the issue. Rule of law In Hungary, it is even related to Rule of law a very significant role – that this manipulation of procurement procedures then leads to oligarchisation, exploitation by organised criminals and the like. I would also like to express my sincere thanks to all the Members of the Court of Auditors, Mr President, and dear Tony Murphy, you are also present. I would like to thank you very much for the excellent cooperation and also for answering us on sometimes very hard questions with great patience and very broad. The budget relief is based on a legal basis. We follow the laws. This means that budget relief does not go according to personal opinion or activism. That's essential to me. I would like to thank you for your work and look forward to further cooperation.

I can read a text very briefly. An error has crept into paragraph 28; for this reason, it was decided that the original text of the PIF report would be inserted and not an interpretation. The original text is: ‘Points out that according to Annex I of the Annual Reports for the Protection of the EU’s Financial Interests (PIF reports) for 2008 and 2019, Romania has, by active anti-fraud investigation, been able to discover and report by far most fraudulently recorded among EU Member States for the respective years;’

Madam President, Commissioner! Ladies and gentlemen, you are still late! Thank you very much for this. Oligarchic structures are a structural problem. This cannot be clarified by any public accusations only against individuals, but one must change the structures. Oligarchic structures are prevented by creating more transparency in certain areas. The transparency in observing where the European Union's funds go is unfortunately still not complete to this day, simply because of national resistance and resistance from the Member States. We often have to rely on national authorities, and if the national authorities do not function properly or perhaps historically corrupt conditions also prevail, then we are currently not in a position to look through these structures early and quickly enough and to prevent, for example, excessive concentration and favouritism, interruptions, for example in tenders – that the same structures appear again and again, which can then enrich themselves accordingly, that tender procedures are undermined, that there is, for example, systemic fraud. We really need to position ourselves better. But I would also like to say to the address of those who have just spoken from the left here that it would also contribute to telling the truth. One must say soberly: The arrest of Boyko Borisov was not constitutional. It was done without judges, it was done without prosecutors – and then imagine Boyko Borisov simply had the socialist opposition leader arrested by the police during his time. But there would have been something going on, they would have stood up and scolded. If you want to preserve the rule of law and fight corruption, you have to stick to rules and laws yourself – point. And no matter who you accuse, the citizen and the head of government are the same: We need the evidence, we need investigations, we need the support of the European Public Prosecutor's Office to do its work. And these arrests, to be clear, were not related to the 120 cases. This has now been acknowledged by the Ministry of the Interior, which is definitely wrong. But let the European prosecutor do her job. We need her, she needs staff, she needs support. And thank you, Commissioner, for finally getting it.

Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, Commissioner! I welcome all those who have stayed here so late and I am pleased that we are discussing this very important own-initiative report with each other, albeit at a later stage. We find increasingly oligarchic structures within the European Union, and even outside the European Union, at our borders, very dangerous oligarchic structures exist. We are not sufficiently equipped for this. Maybe it's because most of the time we think we're working with goodwill. Perhaps also because we are more concerned with the positive things, the promotion and the support, and because we also have confidence in the national authorities – and because sometimes we overlook factors that are quite dangerous. By oligarchy I mean or are commonly understood the criminal combination of businessmen with high-ranking politicians for mutual illegitimate enrichment – and also to exercise power together in illegitimate form. It overrides internal market rules, criminally crowding out competitors and using criminal methods to force them out of the market. There is a systemic fraud in tenders. There is a remarkable concentration of funding among certain individuals. And we do not even have the opportunity to be able to trace back relatively quickly digitally to which beneficial owners have received money or subsidies, which beneficial owners are behind corresponding subsidies. Regrettably, in some of our funds, especially in the agricultural sector, we still have some possibilities that there are no ceilings for the subsidies, not even for the permanent subsidies. This is something where the Committee on Budgetary Control has vehemently campaigned for us to set such ceilings. Because the money should go to the breadth and for the benefit of the breadth of the population. The taxpayer must know who the money goes to, what the money goes to someone for, which projects are funded, and this must be completely traceable. So we finally need what we have discussed with each other. The Commission is approaching gradually, but all steps have so far been voluntary. There is no obligatory interoperable database where you can simply – I say now, at the push of a button – trace who got how much for what? Who is behind a company? How do companies get together? There are still non-transparent company constructs that are hardly traceable. There are straw men and straw women who accordingly try to make use of European money or, as a whole, of money from European taxpayers. And that is why, dear Commissioner, it is also important that, when we discover such structures, we apply the conditionality mechanism accordingly - and apply it consistently. That where we see oligarchs and politicians also doing things together with organised crime, we intervene most consistently and severely and equip the European Public Prosecutor's Office accordingly. But that we finally have the possibility to trace back digitally with great consequence, who gets why how much money? That's not really what you're asking for. If we want to be digitally at the forefront of the world, then it must at least be possible to trace our funding back to the beneficial owners. This should not fail in national bodies, and we also need to know whether national bodies are legitimate and properly equipped at all, let alone want to work properly. I would like to thank Petri Sarvamaa for the excellent report and the President for not stopping me immediately.

Madam President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen! Today, on behalf of Tomáš Zdechovský, I can, so to speak, introduce an important own-initiative report on how EU funds, particularly in the area of shared management, are used and used by organised crime. Because wherever there is money, there are of course also interests of organized crime. One does not want to think at all in which areas organized crime is active. The Committee on Budgetary Control has been able to identify a wide range of activities in this regard and to discuss them with the relevant authorities. It starts with the Agricultural Funds, goes on through the Cohesion Funds and concerns grants of various kinds. It concerns in particular tenders in which in some cases only one tenderer or no tenderer is to be found and, nevertheless, corresponding awards are made. It partly relates to links in policy areas. Then, Commissioner, you know this very well, both in the sale of fake vaccines and in the sale of fake protective material, there have been many billions of attempts to exploit the plight of both medical and human beings in the various Member States. In this respect, it is regrettable that organised crime has become a permanent part of the work of the Committee on Budgetary Control, because there is, of course, a corresponding interest wherever money is potentially awarded. For this reason, the Committee on Budgetary Control attaches great importance to several measures. Firstly: The European Public Prosecutor’s Office must be supported by the Member States in such a way that it can effectively operate across borders in order to detect, prosecute or investigate and effectively carry out the cross-border activities of organised crime. Effective implementation of the PIF Directive by Member States is needed in order to prevent fraud and/or exploitation by organised crime at an early stage. We finally need a digital system for tracing European funds all the way to the beneficial owner, so that we know where the money flows, who receives the money and which people are actually behind organisations or companies. These are mostly normal companies, but there are also camouflage companies. Only recently we have again identified a camouflage company that has worked for terrorist purposes, i.e. also for organised crime and has accordingly obtained European funds or has made use of European funds. We also have a so-called Risk scoring tool, the Arachne system, an IT platform that all Member States could use. And it should become mandatory that all data can be entered accordingly or accessed automatically by this platform in the Member States, so that auditors and inspectors know immediately and immediately where European Union funds have gone and that audits can be carried out much faster and more efficiently than has been the case so far. The Anti-Fraud Office OLAF is an excellent institution. She does an excellent job. It must be better and faster supported by the Member States and the evidence must be usable in court. Furthermore, there is a need for cross-checking with, for example, so-called anti-mafialists, and for much better coordination and cooperation between offices in order to identify more quickly and precisely when criminals try to make use of government or European funds. With this report, Tomáš Zdechovský, together with the Committee on Budgetary Control, is trying to present a report that will take us forward in this work, in the fight against organised crime that commits fraud against European funds.

Madam President, Dear President of the European Court of Auditors, dear Klaus-Heiner Lehne, but also ECA member Tony Murphy, both of whom joined us tonight, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen! We often discuss here all the error rates and error rates. First of all, I would like to express my heartfelt thanks to the Court of Auditors for once again formulating very clearly what the core problems we have in our budget are. When I look at the first area of the so-called shared management As you can see, we are repeatedly confronted with the problem that national authorities in some areas and parts of our Member States are simply not reliable and that we cannot rely on them. We repeat this almost every year. That is why I urgently ask the Commission to finally create a sustainable model here. Short-term task forces or short-term consulting firms simply do not help, because the problems occur again and again. And if, as for example in the Danube Delta or in Bulgaria, in the guest houses or in a few other areas, error rates of not just 4%, but up to 80%, 90%, then I simply get bad. And if the whole thing still takes place perpetuated, then I get even worse. Other areas, on the other hand, work wonderfully and work well, and this must also be pointed out explicitly. What worries me is the area of small and medium-sized enterprises in the area of competitiveness, some of which are overwhelmed by the complex rules and need strong support. Especially start-ups usually cannot afford complicated legal firms to penetrate all the constructions they have to fill out and get the money accordingly. And last point: I would like to make a recommendation to the well-functioning Member States as to whether: gold-plating There is still a real trend today, or whether the accessibility for the corresponding companies or also for universities and the like is designed in such a way that not everyone is frightened by European rules.

Mr President, Commissioner, Mr Minister, ladies and gentlemen! I'm not trying to slander and complain, I'm just trying to convince the European Public Prosecutor's Office. It has only been operational for five months, Commissioner, and it has already opened 400 investigations and the cases amount to €5 billion in damage. Slovenia has joined the Public Prosecutor's Office, other countries are not. The naming process may not have been happy, nor was it correct. I hope that the prosecutors who are now appointed are indeed the permanent partners and that the question is resolved. But what still annoys me is that there are some who do not participate, including countries such as Sweden that are not. We must be careful not to delay the discussion too much: countries like Hungary, as well as countries like Poland, which simply exercise their option – but I do not think it is wise. Because if I look at the fact that in five months alone we can make cross-border investigations to 5 billion euros in damage, I call on all countries to join the EPPO. I urge everyone to quickly name their prosecutors. I call on national prosecutors to cooperate closely. After all, what the EPPO has already tackled in a short period of time means that in the end, the EPPO actually tackles much more than it ever costs or than we can get in with national prosecutors' offices. That's what it's all about. We must work together to advance the European Public Prosecutor’s Office. Slovenia is doing it now. As I said, the process was extremely unfortunate. But I hope we are on the right track now. And now it has to be a matter of everyone else taking part who is not currently doing so.

Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen! At the very beginning, I would like to express my heartfelt thanks to my co-rapporteur – to you, dear Nils – for the excellent cooperation and very, very good cooperation, but also to all the shadow rapporteurs who are also here today. I am pleased that we have worked out a very good text together and have tried to agree on important priorities. The revision of the Financial Regulation provides an opportunity to modernise our rules of the game for the establishment, spending and control of the EU budget and to adapt them to new challenges and lessons learnt. Against the backdrop of 750 billion additional funding from both the Corona Recovery Funds and NextGenerationEU, the requirements for transparency and verifiability of expenditure have risen sharply, particularly as the sector is characterised by a kind of Budget support acting within the European Union. That is, the money goes into the budgets of the Member States and the immediate insight into what is happening with the funds – that is now the challenge that lies ahead. We must remember that the European Parliament is not always involved in decision-making, as evidenced by the emergence of the Corona Reconstruction Funds or NGEU. It must be clear: Once the EU budget has been adopted, Parliament must have the full right to review expenditure, but it should also have a right to design how the money is spent, as we recently discussed with the Committee on Budgets. The revised Financial Regulation must reflect this. We therefore call for the full legal integration of external assigned revenue into the Financial Regulation, which now massively increases the EU budget in the form of NGEU. A crucial point from the point of view of budgetary control is the issue of digitalisation and better traceability of EU funds. Dear Commissioner, I know you – or you – behind us on this issue. But the Member States, astonishingly, who are constantly talking about digitalisation, suddenly have concerns if we want to look: Where did all the money go? Indeed, it is currently not possible to easily and quickly see which final beneficiary receives how much from the Fund in total – on the one hand, because the rules currently do not require that the final beneficiaries and their beneficial owners – and here I mean the natural persons behind companies and conglomerates who benefit from their promotion – be covered uniformly. We want to be able to see whether someone is behind 20 companies or whether a small SME actually receives the help it really needs. On the other hand, it is not possible to aggregate individual amounts of different kinds attributable to the same or to a relative of a beneficial owner into a total amount – for example, if individual persons or companies receive funds from different funds, or if several individual payments to companies belonging to the same conglomerate or to the same beneficial owner must then be tracked accordingly. We urgently need to improve on this. We therefore call on the Commission to come forward with a proposal for an interoperable IT system that will do just that: to show at the touch of a button which final beneficiaries and their beneficial owners actually receive how much money from the EU budget. Because then it is also possible for us as legislators to review new directives, new laws: How successful we were, where there were problems, where there were difficulties, what was particularly successful, and then to make the appropriate political decisions. The main data, such as lists of the largest recipients in each Member State, should also be made available to the public. Of course, we respect the full jurisprudence and the protection of data protection in accordance with what the ECJ or the legislation requires of us. However, this would also allow journalists, NGOs and interested citizens to track what their tax money is spent on and make maladministration easier and clearer to see. A strong concentration of EU funding in the hands of a few oligarchs in some Member States and/or nepotistic benefits, conflicts of interest of high-level decision-makers and/or even members of the government are the things we need to avoid as a matter of urgency and where we need to ensure transparency at an early stage. However, this is not just a question of transparency; We owe it to those who pay the taxes. These are not necessarily just rich people who pay taxes, but ordinary citizens who have to earn their money carefully every month and then have to pay corresponding taxes. They don't like to read it when millions of euros go to individual beneficiaries. I believe that we have an important task ahead of us with the Financial Regulation: ensure that the funds are spent properly and are spent sensibly.

Madam President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen! Two weeks ago, the Commission published fresh figures for 2020, in the so-called PIF report. The VAT gap, namely the difference between expected VAT revenues and actual VAT collected, has a significant impact on the financial interests of the European Union. It stands at a whopping 130 billion for 2019. Europol estimates annual losses from cross-border VAT fraud alone to be between €40 billion and €60 billion. We are discussing here for the tenth time. We have income tax fraud, we have corporate tax fraud, we are struggling to get enough staff in the relevant agencies. We then rake in 20 digits, 30 digits, 40 digits, while the big ones, so to speak, get away with tens of billions. I didn't know why a Czech prime minister would need an offshore company for a French house or a house in France. It doesn't seem to be the usual style. The Lord has often struck us in the way in which he uses European resources. Commissioner, what if, first of all, we finally get sufficient equipment for the European Public Prosecutor's Office, Europol and Eurojust so that they can better fulfil their tasks in this sector as well? What if, at last, the Member States, if their Financial Investigation Units do not fulfil their tasks, are also held accountable by the Commission with extreme urgency? There must finally be consequences, because otherwise people think: The little ones are hung up, the big ones are let go.