 Ashley Mote Tuesday 14 September Financial year 2005 | Mr President, Dr Bruener, the Director General of OLAF, which is responsible for investigating European Union fraud and corruption, told the Committee on Budgetary Control at its last meeting that it was not his job to snoop. His annual report said not a word about the EU's own accounting system, which has been shown to be structurally fraudulent and lacks financial cohesion. It can never comply with even the minimum standards required by the EU itself of companies all over Europe. Dr Brüner failed to address any of the critically important issues of institutionalised malpractice identified in this organisation by experienced accountants. Basic financial records are not being kept; double-entry bookkeeping is still not the norm; cash and bank balances are still not being reconciled, nor are budgets and expenses; advances are recorded as expenditure, which is fraudulent; loans which disappear are written off, which is both a loss of public funds and tax fraud; and records of assets and liabilities in past years are changed retrospectively, which is also fraudulent. I put it to Dr Bruener at that meeting: 'If you are not investigating this disgraceful situation, then who is?' and I got no answer. I now put that question to this Parliament and to the Commission: who is responsible for what is being done to end the European Union's structural and institutional fraud and corruption? |
 Jeffrey Titford Wednesday 15 September Explanation of vote - EU-Mauritius fishing agreement | (in writing) These fisheries deals show the European Union in its worst possible light: greedy, exploitative and behaving like a colonial power. Over the last five years I have campaigned against this appalling environmental degradation and tried to highlight the human cost to the indigenous black African communities. In 2003 and early 2004 over 100 MEPs had, at last, begun to listen. Now I see that opposition has fallen to 70 or 80. The reason, I am told, is that the deals have been reformed. But I would be very cautious about the word 'reform' in an EU context. Invariably it is meaningless. In the case of Africa, it means that some aspects of the deal may be slightly less bad. It is the whole principle that is wrong and that is why UKIP will continue to oppose these deals until that tragic continent gets its fishing grounds back. |
 John Whittaker Wednesday 15 September Stability and growth pact | Mr President, it is clear that the larger eurozone governments have no intention of tying their hands by promising to adhere to the 3% deficit limit. One would not expect them to. The Stability Pact is rather like the common fisheries policy: every country has an interest in other countries keeping to the rules but in not being restricted itself. The fisheries policy is not working very well, nor is the Stability Pact, but – to maintain the pretence – we are now going to have a more flexible pact taking into account economic growth rates and country-specific circumstances. It sounds like a good idea, but in practice all these criteria depend on judgment, as Mr Almunia has just explained. All it will mean in the end is that a country having trouble sticking to the rules of the pact does not have to. A flexible rule ceases to be a rule. The root of the problem is that there is no credible means of enforcement; there never has been. It was always ridiculous to suppose that a government having trouble paying its bills could be punished by imposing a fine; yet, as the European Central Bank points out, sound fiscal policies are vital for the euro. There are many examples of what happens to fixed exchange rate regimes when governments do not keep their budgets in order. An EMU is just a sophisticated form of a fixed exchange rate. Argentina is the most recent case of such a collapse. The problem could of course be solved by much greater control of national budgets, but that does not seem very feasible right now. Certainly we in Britain would not like to see Brussels running our Treasury. Let me end on a positive note. I can only say how thankful I am that Britain has not joined the euro ... (Cheers from the IND/DEM Group) ... and as the weakness of the Stability Pact becomes more obvious, the chances of us ever joining are becoming more and more remote. (Applause from the IND/DEM Group) |