Activities of Notis MARIAS related to 2016/2097(INI)
Plenary speeches (1)
Annual report 2015 on the protection of EU's financial interests - Fight against fraud (debate) EL
Amendments (44)
Amendment 1 #
Motion for a resolution
Citation 1 a (new)
Citation 1 a (new)
- having regard to Protocol (No 1) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) on the role of national parliaments in the European Union,
Amendment 2 #
Motion for a resolution
Citation 1 b (new)
Citation 1 b (new)
- having regard to Protocol (No 2) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) on the application of the principles of subsidiarity and proportionality,
Amendment 5 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital Α
Recital Α
Α. whereasstressing that the Member States and the Commission have shared responsibility for implementing approximately 80 % of the Union’s budget;
Amendment 6 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 1
Paragraph 1
1. Welcomes the Annual Report of the Commission and recalls that the goal of enhancing regional cohesion should always be accompanied by the protection of the EU’sEU Member States’ financial interests; notes that the fight against fraudulent or non- fraudulent irregularities also increases the general effectiveness of EU fund management;
Amendment 7 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital Β
Recital Β
Β. whereas the protection of the EU’s financial interests should be a key element of the EU’s policy to prevent them being harmed by any form of illegal activity and increase the confidence of citizens by ensuring that their money is used properly and according to the ‘best use of every euro’ approach;
Amendment 9 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 2
Paragraph 2
Amendment 10 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 2
Paragraph 2
2. Reiterates its call on the Council to resume immediately the negotiations with Parliament on the Directive on the protection of the financial interests of the Union (PIF Directive); recalls that the PIF Directive ishould be an essential instrument in fighting fraud, corruption, money laundering and other illegal activities affecting the EU’s financial interests; considers that, in the light of the judgment of the Court of Justice of the European Union in case C-105/14, Taricco and Others, the inclusion of VAT in the scope of the directive is inevitable;
Amendment 12 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital C
Recital C
C. whereasstressing that Article 325 (2) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, states that Member States shall take the same measures to counter fraud affecting the financial interests of the Union as they take to counter fraud affecting their own financial interests;
Amendment 13 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital D
Recital D
D. whereasstressing that Article 325 (3) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, states that Member States shall organise, together with the Commission, close and regular cooperation between the competent authorities;
Amendment 13 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 3
Paragraph 3
Amendment 15 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital Ε
Recital Ε
Ε. whereas the diversity of legal and administrative systems in the Member States presents a challenging environment in which to overcome irregularities and combat fraud undermining the economic interests of the Union and its citizens;
Amendment 15 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 4
Paragraph 4
Amendment 17 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 3
Paragraph 3
3. Calls on the Commission and the Member States to enhance the harmonisation of classification, detection and reporting of irregularities between Member States; welcomes, however, the preventive and corrective measures taken by the Commission to avoid fraudulent or not fraudulent irregularities;
Amendment 18 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital G
Recital G
G. whereasdeploring the fact that the current VAT system, in particular as applied to cross-border transactions, is vulnerable to fraud and tax avoidance strategies, in which MTIC fraud (Missing Trader Intra- Community fraud, commonly called carousel fraud) alone was responsible for VAT revenue losses of approximately 50 billion EUR in 2014;
Amendment 18 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 5
Paragraph 5
Amendment 20 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital Η
Recital Η
Η. whereasdeploring the fact that the VAT gap amounts to approximately 159.5 billion EUR in 2014 and varies from less than 5% to over 40% depending on the country considered;
Amendment 29 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 4
Paragraph 4
4. Appreciates the efforts made by thsome Member States to detect, evaluate and report irregularities and to implement effective and proportionate anti-fraud measures; calls on the Commission also to use technical assistance in order to help strengthen the technical and administrative capacity of managing authorities to ensure effective control systems able to reduce the risks of fraud;
Amendment 34 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 2
Paragraph 2
2. Is concerned that despite the positive drop of 11% of fraudulent irregularities from 1,649 in 2014 to 1,461 in 2015, the sums involved increased 18 % from 538 million EUR in 2014 to 637.6 million EUR in 2015;
Amendment 41 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 5
Paragraph 5
5. EncouragesCalls on the European Commission to continuestep up its efforts to develop programmes such as REFIT in order to simplify EU legislation; stresses that the simplification of rules and procedures helps to lower irregularities which are often linked to complex rules and requirements; notes that a reduction of administrative burden is a cost saving for public administrations and EU citizens and also encourages beneficiaries to undertake new EU programs; stresses that simplification of rules should go in line with the principle of an EU budget focused on results;
Amendment 48 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 6
Paragraph 6
6. Notes with some satisfaction that the spike of the amount of Traditional Own Resources (TOR) affected by fraud in 2014 was a one-year issue and that the 2015 levels (EUR 427 million) have returned to the average of the 2011-2015 years; is displeased however that some of the Member States do not communicate any cases of irregularities linked to TOR;
Amendment 51 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 7
Paragraph 7
7. UrgesCalls on the Member States to recover the amounts of TOR due more quickly, especially those Member States which need to recover the largest amounts; urges Greece, Romania, Latvia, Malta and the Netherlands to improve their collection of TOR, as their rate of TOR due remains significantly above the EU average of 1.71% and is 8.95%, 5.07%, 5.04%, 3.84% and 3.81% respectively;
Amendment 59 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 9
Paragraph 9
9. Takes note of the 241 cases of reported smuggled cigarettes involving an estimated TOR loss of EUR 31 million; puts into question the vigilance of the customs services of those Members States (the Czech Republic, Malta, Cyprus, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal and Sweden) which have not reported any single case of cigarette smuggling in 2015 and stresses the need to improve customs services in those Member States;
Amendment 64 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 10
Paragraph 10
10. Is concerned aboutDeplores the losses due to VAT gap and intra-community VAT fraud, which is responsible consecutively for 159,5 billion EUR and 50 billion EUR revenue loss in 2014; notes that only two Member States, the UK and Belgium, collect and disseminate statistics on the issue of revenue losses caused cross-border VAT fraud;
Amendment 68 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 11
Paragraph 11
11. Points out that the Commission does not have access to the information exchanged between Member States with a view to preventing and combating Missing Trader Intra-Community fraud, commonly called carousel fraud;; calls on all the Member States to participate in all of Eurofisc’s fields of activity so as to facilitate the exchange of information with the aim of helping to combat fraud effectively;
Amendment 70 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 13
Paragraph 13
13. Notes that the VAT Information Exchange System (VIES) has proven to be a helpful tool in fighting fraud by enabling tax authorities to reconcile data on traders across countries; calls on the Member States to improve immediately response times for providing information, replying to queries and reacting to errors signalled, as recommended by the European Court of Auditors;
Amendment 74 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 14
Paragraph 14
14. WelcomNotes the Commission action plan on “VAT-Towards a single EU VAT area’’ published on 7 April 2016; deeply regrets that the publication of the “Measures to improve cooperation between tax administrations and with customs and law enforcement bodies and to strengthen tax administrations' capacity” foreseen in the action plan for 2016 will be delayed by one year;
Amendment 76 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 16
Paragraph 16
16. Takes positive note of the successful outcomes of numerous joint customs operations (JCOs) involving the cooperation of OLAF and Member States with various third-country services, which have resulted in the seizure of, inter alia, 16 million sticks of cigarettes and 2 tonnes of cannabis;
Amendment 86 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 18
Paragraph 18
18. DeploreGreatly regrets that the amount of irregularities reported in the European Agricultural Guarantee Fund (EAGF) and in the European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development (EAFRD) is growing annually for at least 5 consecutive years with the amount of reported cases growing up from 1970 in 2011 to 4612 cases in 2015 with the sums involved growing from EUR 119 million in 2012 to EUR 394 million in 2015 with the level of reported irregularities of the EAFRD coming close to 2% of the entire fund; urges the Member States with the highest amount of irregularities reported – Romania, Italy, Spain, Poland, Hungary, Portugal and Lithuania – to do their utmost in order to regulate the situation;
Amendment 93 #
21. Regrets that more than two-thirds of the estimated level of errors in 2015 EDF expenditure were caused by the absence of supporting documents to justify the expenditure and non-compliance with public procurement rules; calls on the Commission and Member States to address these shortcomings immediately;
Amendment 97 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 22
Paragraph 22
22. Asks for furtherdetailed explanations from the Commission regarding the reasons behind the high level of fraudulent cases in research and technological development (R&TD), innovation and entrepreneurship which has grown from 6 to 91 reported cases annually in the 2007-13 programming period, representing a sum of EUR 263 million, which constitutes over 20% of all reported fraud cases in the cohesion policy;
Amendment 98 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 23
Paragraph 23
23. WelcomNotes the overall drop in reported irregularities in the Pre-Accession Assistance (PAA); notes however that the number of irregularities in the Instrument for Pre-Accession (IPA I) is steadily growing with Turkey being the contributor of 46% of cases representing 83% of the sums of reported irregularities; invites the Commission to consider applying the “more for more” principle in its negative aspect (“less for less”), given the current political situation in Turkey which poses direct threat to the absorption capacities of the country;
Amendment 102 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 25
Paragraph 25
25. Notes with concern that, despite the numerous calls from Parliament for the establishment of uniform reporting principles in all Member States, the situation remains highly unsatisfactory and there are still significant differences in the number of fraudulent and non-fraudulent irregularities reported by each Member State; reiterates its call tocalls on the Commission to make serious efforts to resolve the problem of differing approaches by Member States to detecting irregularities, and non- homogeneous interpretations when applying the EU legal framework;
Amendment 113 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 27
Paragraph 27
27. Supports the Commission in its approach to recommendstress the need to strengthening the work of the Member States, which continue to report a very low number of fraudulent irregularities, in relation to detecting and/or reporting fraud, in particular, those which have not reported any case over the last five years: Slovakia and Finland in the area of agriculture and Denmark and Luxembourg in the area of cohesion policy;
Amendment 115 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 28
Paragraph 28
28. Takes positive note of the increase of the amount of data published by the Commission on fraudulent and non- fraudulent irregularities and on the quality of statistical evaluation of irregularities reported;
Amendment 120 #
29. Welcomes the fact thatExpects the ex-ante and ex-post 'Community Controls' areto detecting more and more cases of irregularities; considers however, that prevention is easier than recovery of losses; urges therefore on Member States to better carry out the ex- ante controls with the assistance of the Commission;
Amendment 122 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 30
Paragraph 30
30. Encourages the Commission to further enhance its supervisory role through audit, control and inspection activities, remedial action plans and early warning letters with a view to reducing irregularities;
Amendment 127 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 32
Paragraph 32
32. Looks forward to the Commission’s mid-term assessment in 2018 in order to establish whether the new regulatory architecture for cohesion policy further substantially prevents and reduces the risk of irregularities including fraud, and looks forward to receiving detailed information on the impact of the new rules on management and control systems, both as regards the risk of irregularities and fraud and as regards the general implementation of the policy;
Amendment 132 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 33
Paragraph 33
33. Emphasizes the role of whistle- blowers in fraud detection and the need to protect them; welcomes the fact that in 2015 the European Commission has launched the "Experience Sharing Programme" to coordinate and exchange best practices to prevent corruption in cooperation with Member States;
Amendment 138 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 34
Paragraph 34
34. Welcomes the fact that the European Parliament, the European Commission, the Council of the European Union, the Court of Justice of the European Union, the European Court of Auditors, the European External Action Service, the European Economic and Social Committee, the Committee of the Regions, the European Ombudsman and the European Data Protection Supervisor implemented internal rules protecting whistle-blowers, in accordance with Articles 22a, 22b and 22c of the Staff Regulations and expects further improvements regarding whistle-blower protection rules;
Amendment 143 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 35
Paragraph 35
35. Notes that in 2015 the fight against corruption remained a priority in the framework of the European Semester and the related process of economic governance; welcomnotes measures taken in this fight such as organizing meeting with the national contact points of the Member States, launching the "Experience Sharing Programme" for Member States, the participation of OLAF on behalf of the Commission in European and international anti-corruption fora;
Amendment 148 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 36
Paragraph 36
36. DeploRegrets that the Commission did not keep its word to publish an EU Anti- Corruption reports biannually, as there has been no report published in 2016;
Amendment 159 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 37
Paragraph 37
37. WelcomesAcknowledges action to breaking the deadlock in the Council regarding the proposal on the Directive on the fight against fraud to the Union’s financial interests by means of criminal law (PIF Directive) with a VAT fraud included in its scope; expresses hope for a swift conclusion of the PIF directive negotiations and looks forward to obtaining an agreement that will be beneficial for the financial interests of the Union;
Amendment 172 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 39
Paragraph 39
39. Regrets to note that despite the assurances of OLAF that it is doing its utmost to shorten the length of its investigations the duration of its investigative phase is growing continuously since 2012 from 22.5 to 25.1 months in closed cases and from 17.3 to 18.7 months in all cases, which does not help in efforts to combat tax fraud and tax evasion by multinationals;
Amendment 178 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 40
Paragraph 40
40. Reminds that in the light of the principle of mutual sincere cooperation between the institutions, of the principle of good administration and of the requirement of legal certainty, OLAF should organise its collaboration with its Supervisory Committee in a jointly agreed framework, fully respecting the applicable legal provisions, providing practical support for measures to combat tax evasion;