2020/2126(INI) MFF 2021-2027: fight against oligarch structures, protection of EU funds from fraud and conflict of interest
Lead committee dossier:
Progress: Awaiting committee decision
Role | Committee | Rapporteur | Shadows |
---|---|---|---|
Lead | CONT | SARVAMAA Petri ( EPP) | RÓNAI Sándor ( S&D), CSEH Katalin ( Renew), CZARNECKI Ryszard ( ECR), FLANAGAN Luke Ming ( GUE/NGL) |
Committee Opinion | AGRI | ARA-KOVÁCS Attila ( S&D) | Michaela ŠOJDROVÁ ( PPE), Veronika VRECIONOVÁ ( ECR), Atidzhe ALIEVA-VELI ( RE), Claude GRUFFAT ( Verts/ALE), Chris MACMANUS ( GUE/NGL) |
Lead committee dossier:
Legal Basis:
RoP 54
Legal Basis:
RoP 54Subjects
Events
2021/11/10
EP - Committee draft report
Documents
2021/06/28
EP - ARA-KOVÁCS Attila (S&D) appointed as rapporteur in AGRI
2021/01/13
EP - SARVAMAA Petri (EPP) appointed as rapporteur in CONT
2020/09/17
EP - Committee referral announced in Parliament
Activities
- José Manuel FERNANDES
Plenary Speeches (0)
- Luke Ming FLANAGAN
Plenary Speeches (0)
- Maria GRAPINI
Plenary Speeches (0)
- Heidi HAUTALA
Plenary Speeches (0)
- Monika HOHLMEIER
Plenary Speeches (0)
- Ádám KÓSA
Plenary Speeches (0)
- Roberta METSOLA
Plenary Speeches (0)
- Siegfried MUREŞAN
Plenary Speeches (0)
- Maria NOICHL
Plenary Speeches (0)
- Waldemar TOMASZEWSKI
Plenary Speeches (0)
- Tomáš ZDECHOVSKÝ
Plenary Speeches (0)
- Clare DALY
Plenary Speeches (0)
- Joachim KUHS
Plenary Speeches (0)
- Ramona STRUGARIU
Plenary Speeches (0)
- Mick WALLACE
Plenary Speeches (0)
- Karin KARLSBRO
Plenary Speeches (0)
- Guido REIL
Plenary Speeches (0)
- Daniel FREUND
Plenary Speeches (0)
- Vlad-Marius BOTOŞ
Plenary Speeches (0)
- Elżbieta RAFALSKA
Plenary Speeches (0)
- Sándor RÓNAI
Plenary Speeches (0)
- Claude GRUFFAT
Plenary Speeches (0)
Amendments | Dossier |
82 |
2020/2126(INI)
2021/11/10
AGRI
82 amendments...
Amendment 1 #
Draft opinion Paragraph 1 1. Underlines that common agricultural policy (CAP)
Amendment 10 #
Draft opinion Paragraph 2 2. Welcomes the study entitled ‘The Largest 50 Beneficiaries in each EU Member State of CAP and Cohesion Funds’ and emphasises the importance of
Amendment 11 #
Draft opinion Paragraph 2 2. Welcomes the study entitled ‘The Largest 50 Beneficiaries in each EU Member State of CAP and Cohesion Funds’ and emphasises the importance of consolidating, streamlining and harmonising EU reporting systems; stresses also that reporting systems for CAP and cohesion policy funds should contain information on final beneficiaries so that an evidence-based assessment can be made of the fair and proportionate distribution of funds;
Amendment 12 #
Draft opinion Paragraph 2 a (new) 2a. Voices concern, however, at the fact that nationals of non-EU countries are among the largest beneficiaries of CAP funds; calls for the allocation of those funds to be subject to a nationality criterion;
Amendment 13 #
Draft opinion Paragraph 3 3. Notes the EU-wide definition of active farmers in the new CAP
Amendment 14 #
Draft opinion Paragraph 3 3. Notes the EU-wide definition of active farmers in the new CAP; emphasises, however, the lack of progress
Amendment 15 #
Draft opinion Paragraph 3 3. Notes the EU-wide definition of active farmers in the new CAP; emphasises, however, the lack of progress in the fight against oligarch structures; and in the well-meant attempt to outroot the abuse CAP funds by oligarchs, warns against an increased administrative burden on genuine farmers;
Amendment 16 #
Draft opinion Paragraph 3 3. Notes the EU-wide definition of active farmers in the new CAP is the mandatory instrument, that should lead to greater transparency and does not increase bureaucracy for SMEs; emphasises, however, the lack of progress in the fight against oligarch structures;
Amendment 17 #
Draft opinion Paragraph 3 3. Notes the EU-wide definition of active farmers in the new CAP; emphasises, however, the lack of progress in the fight against criminal and oligarch structures;
Amendment 18 #
Draft opinion Paragraph 3 3. Notes the EU-wide definition of active farmers in the new CAP; emphasises, however, the lack of progress in the fight against oligarch structures; notes that this is largely because of a lack of transparency affecting all final beneficiaries of the CAP budget as a whole (including holding companies and ultimate beneficial owners), and in particular those upstream in the supply chain, as at present there is transparency only as regards farmers applying for CAP funds who complete an annual declaration;
Amendment 19 #
Draft opinion Paragraph 3 3. Notes the EU-wide definition of active farmers in the new CAP; emphasises
Amendment 2 #
Draft opinion Paragraph 1 1. Underlines that common agricultural policy (CAP) funds make up a significant proportion of the 2021-2027 EU budget
Amendment 20 #
Draft opinion Paragraph 3 a (new) 3 a. Underlines the importance of stronger cooperation and coordination between the Member States and the relevant EU bodies engaged in the fight against fraud and misuse of funding (OLAF, the European Court of Auditors, Eurojust and the European Public Prosecutor’s Office (EPPO)); in addition, calls on the Member States to ensure that the competent national authorities are sufficiently funded and well trained to effectively detect and address fraud and misuse of CAP funds;
Amendment 21 #
3a. Takes the view that the current unfair distribution of CAP support, resulting in the cumulation of support and in farm expansion, is creating an environment conducive to conflicts of interest and to fraud; regrets that the capping of support and other forms of redistribution under the CAP have not been made compulsory for Member States after 2023; considers that a unique opportunity has been missed, for which the Council bears responsibility in particular, to make the support system fairer, more equitable and less subject to risks of conflicts of interest and fraud;
Amendment 22 #
Draft opinion Paragraph 4 4.
Amendment 23 #
Draft opinion Paragraph 4 4. Emphasises the need for more targeted support towards smaller and medium-sized farms with special attention to young farmers at Member State level; Encourages the Member States to use the different redistributive tools for a fairer distribution of funds
Amendment 24 #
Draft opinion Paragraph 4 4.
Amendment 25 #
Draft opinion Paragraph 4 4. Encourages the Member States to use the different redistributive tools for a fairer distribution of funds and to apply the capping provisions on direct payments; calls, furthermore, on the Commission to take decisive action to increase the external convergence under Pillar I of the CAP as another tool to combat unfair distribution of EU money among Member States;
Amendment 26 #
Draft opinion Paragraph 4 4.
Amendment 27 #
Draft opinion Paragraph 4 4.
Amendment 28 #
Draft opinion Paragraph 4 4. Encourages the Member States to use the different redistributive tools for a fairer distribution of funds and to apply the capping provisions on direct payments, including at the level of parent structures, so that larger holding companies cannot circumvent capping by artificially splitting themselves up into smaller entities;
Amendment 29 #
Draft opinion Paragraph 4 a (new) 4 a. Reminds, that the farm structure vary between different Member States a lot; therefore Member States should have a large range of volyntary measures available instead of capping to redistribute payments;
Amendment 3 #
Draft opinion Paragraph 1 1. Underlines that common agricultural policy (CAP) funds make up a significant proportion of the 2021-2027 EU budget and that there is therefore a responsibility to protect them against any type of misuse, which is detrimental to the image of what is a public policy and to the interests of the European citizens who contribute to that budget;
Amendment 30 #
Draft opinion Paragraph 4 a (new) 4 a. Emphasizes that the ARACHNE is a key instrument for transparency on the beneficiaries of CAP funds;
Amendment 31 #
Draft opinion Paragraph 4 a (new) 4a. Points out that the Commission has developed and made available to all Member States the ARACHNE system, an IT tool for collecting and linking data (data mining), in order to establish fraud risk indicators in connection with the European Structural and Investment Funds (ESIF);
Amendment 32 #
Draft opinion Paragraph 4 b (new) 4b. Points out that ARACHNE is not yet fully fit for purpose for all CAP actions, in particular direct payments and area-based interventions under the second pillar, and that in 2025 the Commission will submit a report assessing how it is used and interoperates with the various national systems, with a view to across- the-board utilisation by Member States;
Amendment 33 #
Draft opinion Paragraph 5 5. Calls for the mandatory use of the ARACHNE system by Member States in order to achieve more transparency on the beneficiaries of CAP funds and where such funds end up, as well as the mandatory use of the Early Detection and Exclusion System for CAP funds in an effort to enhance transparency on the use of taxpayers’ money; the Commission should create a new comprehensive real-time monitoring system, including existing instruments such as Arachne, which provides an accurate picture of the distribution and fair allocation of EU funds, and the ability to track and aggregate distributed funds; this system should include information on the links between companies and beneficial owners;
Amendment 34 #
Draft opinion Paragraph 5 5. Calls for the mandatory use of
Amendment 35 #
Draft opinion Paragraph 5 5.
Amendment 36 #
Draft opinion Paragraph 5 5.
Amendment 37 #
Draft opinion Paragraph 5 5. Calls for
Amendment 38 #
Draft opinion Paragraph 5 5.
Amendment 39 #
Draft opinion Paragraph 5 5. Calls for the mandatory use of the ARACHNE system by Member States in order to achieve more transparency on ultimat
Amendment 4 #
Draft opinion Paragraph 1 1. Underlines that common agricultural policy (CAP) funds make up a significant proportion of the 2021-2027 EU budget and that there is therefore a heightened responsibility to protect them against any type of misuse;
Amendment 40 #
Draft opinion Paragraph 5 a (new) 5 a. Calls on the Commission to request EU member states collect and publish the data in a transparent and user-friendly manner (including the machine readable format) on the EU agriculture funds payments in order to enable public control of final beneficiaries and the use of the EU funds;
Amendment 41 #
Draft opinion Paragraph 5 b (new) 5 b. Notes that government sale or lease auctions are used by oligarch structures to purchase land, exceeding state limits on maximum hectare purchases, enabled by lax checks on such transactions;
Amendment 42 #
Draft opinion Paragraph 5 a (new) Amendment 43 #
Draft opinion Paragraph 5 b (new) 5b. Notes that, to date, ARACHNE has tended to be used in connection with project-related expenditure; calls therefore on the Commission to develop a similar approach as regards the data mining tool in order to increase transparency relating to the remaining CAP funds, in particular first-pillar payments aggregated by parent company and ultimate beneficial owner;
Amendment 44 #
Draft opinion Paragraph 6 Amendment 45 #
Draft opinion Paragraph 6 6. Urges the Commission to strengthen its fraud prevention and detection capabilities; calls on the Commission to collect information on all subsidies received from the first and second pillars of the CAP and to aggregate the total amount that a natural person receives either directly through direct payments or indirectly as the beneficial owner of legal persons that are beneficiaries of CAP payments (direct payments and rural development payments) for prevent oligarchs from abusing these subsidies;
Amendment 46 #
Draft opinion Paragraph 6 6. Urges the Commission to
Amendment 47 #
Draft opinion Paragraph 6 6.
Amendment 48 #
Draft opinion Paragraph 6 6. Urges the Commission to strengthen its fraud prevention and detection capabilities, but without creating additional administrative or bureaucratic burdens, especially for small and medium-sized enterprises, and to apply stricter penalties to those who use the funds for purposes other than those for which they were intended;
Amendment 49 #
Draft opinion Paragraph 6 a (new) 6 a. Recognises the work of OLAF and calls for increased efforts and vigilance in relation to the cases of conflict of interest and against oligarch structures, especially in certain Member States where these cases are more often identified; emphasises that these kind of misuses are to the detriment of the taxpayers’ money and EU’s financial interest;
Amendment 5 #
Draft opinion Paragraph 1 a (new) 1a. Considers that greater transparency is a decisive factor in detecting fraud and conflicts of interest and that it is therefore essential to publish a comprehensive list of CAP beneficiaries which is clear and accessible to the public; points out that that requires more common rules, better data interoperability, more cross-border cooperation and greater use of modern and efficient (digital) tools;
Amendment 50 #
Draft opinion Paragraph 6 a (new) 6 a. Notes that the new CAP includes provisions, proposed by the European Parliament, that should further help the effective protection of the financial interests of the Union through collection and publication of data on groups of beneficiaries;
Amendment 51 #
Draft opinion Paragraph 6 a (new) 6 a. Recalls Article 60 of EU Regulation 1306/2013, which introduces the Circumvention clause against artificially created conditions for obtaining advantages;
Amendment 52 #
Draft opinion Paragraph 6 b (new) 6 b. Commends the work of the European Court of Auditors and the European Anti-Fraud Office in tackling such structures;
Amendment 53 #
Draft opinion Paragraph 6 c (new) 6 c. Urges greater use of the EU Copernicus ob-servation programme to detect discrepancies between declared and actually cultivated parcels;
Amendment 54 #
Draft opinion Paragraph 6 d (new) 6 d. Recalls that in Bulgaria in 2019, checks of 22,007 hectares on the ground revealed errors of around 10per cent in the declared areas for subsidising under the coupled support measures;
Amendment 55 #
Draft opinion Paragraph 6 e (new) 6 e. Deplores acts of physical intimidation against farmers, such as those which took place in Slovakia, and which were investigated by the CONT committee in 2018;
Amendment 56 #
Draft opinion Paragraph 6 f (new) 6 f. Recalls that in Romania the authorities have intensified fraud investigations con-cerning EU money in the last four years, identifying a prejudice of more than 100 million EUR, of which almost 90% is related to EU funds;
Amendment 57 #
Draft opinion Paragraph 6 g (new) 6 g. Call on the Commission to increase the weight of the political aspect of its evaluation processes, as the issue of conflict of interest as well as of revolving doors in the sector is a serious problem;
Amendment 58 #
Draft opinion Paragraph 6 h (new) 6 h. Calls on the Commission to monitor the situation of Agriculture Paying Agencies in the member states and ensure both their formal and informal independence and bring their work in compliance with the EU rules, securing this inter alia through randomly generated visits a better EU control system in place;
Amendment 59 #
Draft opinion Paragraph 6 i (new) 6 i. Call for the European bodies responsible for investigating and tackling the misuse of EU funds, including the European Public Prosecutors Office and OLAF, to be equipped with sufficient re-sources to proceed effectively with their responsibilities in terms of the protection of the EU’s budget;
Amendment 6 #
Draft opinion Paragraph 1 a (new) 1a. Reaffirms that the CAP remains one of the best managed EU policies and that the error rate for the natural resources heading, for which the CAP accounts for 98 % of expenditure, has now stabilised at less than 2 %; adds that the error rate for direct payments is significantly lower than that figure;
Amendment 60 #
Draft opinion Paragraph 6 j (new) 6 j. Call on the Commission to ensure that the Fifth Anti-money laundering directive is implemented fully and correctly in all member states, particularly with regard to the implementations of public registers of beneficial owners and registers of beneficial owners of trusts;
Amendment 61 #
Draft opinion Paragraph 6 k (new) 6 k. Recalls the case of Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babiš, that although he transferred Agrofert into two trust funds in February 2017, he is still the beneficial owner, as concluded by auditors, of Agrofert hold-ing, and thus in conflict of interest;
Amendment 62 #
Draft opinion Paragraph 6 l (new) 6 l. Recalls the situation of Bulgaria, where 230 biggest beneficiaries received direct subsidies of more than 120 million euro. In other words, 0.33 per cent of the beneficiaries took 15.3 per cent of all payments, while at the same time, 48 per cent of the smallest beneficiaries retained a meagre 3.4 per cent of the payments;
Amendment 63 #
Draft opinion Paragraph 6 a (new) Amendment 64 #
Draft opinion Paragraph 6 a (new) 6a. Considers that combating conflicts of interest and fraud not only requires a comprehensive information and monitoring system that provides a clear and accurate picture of the distribution of CAP funds, but also presupposes a strengthened role for OLAF: the resources it has for investigations, for following up complaints and for training must be stepped up, and its arrangements for European coordination with the Court of Auditors, Eurojust, the European Public Prosecutor's Office and the Member States must be enhanced, as must the coordination it can carry out at international level; referral to OLAF by any citizen must be facilitated and whistle-blowers must be better protected;
Amendment 65 #
Draft opinion Paragraph 7 Amendment 66 #
Draft opinion Paragraph 7 7. Expresses its concern at the cases of high-level conflicts of interest and land- grabbing by oligarchs, which are possibly being facilitated by governments and public authorities; calls on the Member States to implement the Article 61 on Conflict of interests by and its application on all EU funds´ payments as the main instrument for the fights against oligarchs; calls on the Commission to control the compliance with Article 61 and evaluate the impact of the fight against the oligarchs and the misuse of subsidies;
Amendment 67 #
Draft opinion Paragraph 7 7. Expresses its concern at the cases of high-level conflicts of interest and land- grabbing by oligarchs and criminals, which are possibly being facilitated by governments and public authorities; calls on the Member States to adhere to the Financial Regulation of the EU, and in particular to implement the Article 61on Conflict of interests and to apply it on all EU funds´ payments; calls on the Commission to control the compliance with Article 61 and evaluate the impact of conflict of interest on the use of funds;
Amendment 68 #
Draft opinion Paragraph 7 7. Expresses its concern at the cases of high-level conflicts of interest and land- grabbing by oligarchs, which are possibly being facilitated by governments and public authorities; calls for extra scrutiny towards Member States by the Commission to this end; urges the Commission and Member states to immediately step up measures against land-grabbing, irregular tenders or other allocation procedures and misconduct of EU-money especially when national authorities and governments are involved;
Amendment 69 #
Draft opinion Paragraph 7 7. Expresses its concern at the cases of high-level conflicts of interest and land- grabbing by oligarchs, which are possibly being facilitated by governments and public authorities; further calls for a distinction to be made between land- grabbing and the accumulation of small agricultural plots as a way to reduce high levels of fragmentation and to assemble economically viable agricultural units;
Amendment 7 #
Draft opinion Paragraph 2 2. Welcomes the study entitled ‘The Largest 50 Beneficiaries in each EU Member State of CAP and Cohesion Funds’1a and emphasises the importance of consolidating and harmonising EU reporting systems; stresses also that reporting systems for CAP and cohesion policy funds should contain information on final beneficiaries; regrets that currently, data for identification of economic operators and their beneficial owners is not easily or not at all accessible; stresses therefore the need for a common database at EU level gathering harmonised data from already existing databases at regional, national and inter-regional level. This would require harmonisation of disclosure requirements and data formats fulfiling the Open data requirements with indicators defined to allow ultimate beneficiaries in the national and EU-level databases to be identified; _________________ 1aStudy on the largest 50 beneficiaries in each EU Member State of CAP and Cohesion Funds, requested by the CONT Committee, PE 679.107 - May 2021
Amendment 70 #
Draft opinion Paragraph 7 7. Expresses its concern at the cases of high-level conflicts of interest and land- grabbing by oligarchs,
Amendment 71 #
Draft opinion Paragraph 8 Amendment 72 #
Draft opinion Paragraph 8 8.
Amendment 73 #
Draft opinion Paragraph 8 8. Emphasises the
Amendment 74 #
Draft opinion Paragraph 9 9. Emphasises the importance of full transparency in the decision-making process as a measure to prevent conflicts of interest; underlines that having effective management and control systems in place in each Member State is therefore crucial condition for legal and regular spending of EU funds;
Amendment 75 #
Draft opinion Paragraph 9 a (new) 9a. Takes the view that there may also be conflicts of interest in connection with advisory services, because of the importance attached to AKIS receiving financial support from the second pillar of the CAP, in particular when a vendor advises a farmer on the purchase of inputs, and in particular pesticides, as this may discriminate against and penalise alternative practices based on agroecology and/or integrated pest management;
Amendment 76 #
Draft opinion Paragraph 10 Amendment 77 #
Draft opinion Paragraph 10 10. Encourages the harmonisation of cadastral systems at EU level and support interoperability with the Land Parcel Identification System (LPIS) in order to achieve transparency on ultimate beneficial users and often hidden parent- companies.
Amendment 78 #
Draft opinion Paragraph 10 10. Encourages the
Amendment 79 #
Draft opinion Paragraph 10 10.
Amendment 8 #
Draft opinion Paragraph 2 2. Welcomes the study entitled ‘The Largest 50 Beneficiaries in each EU Member State of CAP and Cohesion Funds’ and emphasises the importance of consolidating and harmonising EU reporting systems, including through shared databases to ensure EU-wide data base interoperability, common rules and data exchange between governments and stakeholders; stresses also that reporting systems for CAP and cohesion
Amendment 80 #
Draft opinion Paragraph 10 10. Encourages the harmonisation of cadastral systems at EU level
Amendment 81 #
Draft opinion Paragraph 10 10. Encourages
Amendment 82 #
Draft opinion Paragraph 10 a (new) 10 a. Recalls the fact that the fundamental reason for misuses of EU funds is the extraordinarily high EU- budget and its redistribution in forms of numerous hefty subsidies.
Amendment 9 #
Draft opinion Paragraph 2 2. Welcomes the CONT study entitled ‘The Largest 50 Beneficiaries in each EU Member State of CAP and Cohesion Funds’ and emphasises the importance of consolidating and harmonising EU reporting systems and create interoperability among them; stresses also that reporting systems for CAP and cohesion policy funds should contain information on final beneficiaries;
source: 699.334
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