Activities of Petri SARVAMAA related to 2022/2152(INI)
Plenary speeches (1)
Protection of the EU’s financial interests - combating fraud - annual report 2021 (debate)
Amendments (40)
Amendment 2 #
Motion for a resolution
Citation 12 a (new)
Citation 12 a (new)
— having regard to the judgements of the ECJ of 16 February 2022 and its conclusions that the Rule of Law Conditionality Mechanism is in line with EU law, confirming the appropriateness of the legal basis, the regime’s compatibility with Article 7 TEU and the principle of legal certainty,
Amendment 4 #
Motion for a resolution
Citation 12 b (new)
Citation 12 b (new)
— having regard that on 2 March 2022, European Commission adopted its guidelines on the general regime of conditionality,
Amendment 7 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital -A (new)
Recital -A (new)
-A. whereas sound public spending and the protection of the EU’s financial interests should be key elements of EU policy in order to increase the confidence of citizens by ensuring that taxpayers’ money is used properly and effectively,
Amendment 8 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital B a (new)
Recital B a (new)
Amendment 9 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital B b (new)
Recital B b (new)
B b. whereas the conditionality regulation allows the EU to take measures – for example suspension of payments or financial corrections – to protect the budget from fraud and shield the rule of law;
Amendment 10 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital B c (new)
Recital B c (new)
B c. whereas the European Court of Justice dismissed claims by two Member States, ruling that the conditionality regulation falls within the power conferred by the financial rules for the implementation of the EU budget;
Amendment 11 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital D
Recital D
D. whereas the Union and Member States share responsibility for protecting the EU’s financial interests and, with the entry into force of the unprecedented funds of the RRF, responsibility for the regulation and the implementation of the national recovery and resilience plans (RRPs), such that the role of national authorities in ensuring an adequate level of protection of the EU’s financial interests has increased significantly;
Amendment 13 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital E
Recital E
E. whereas the implementation of the RRF will increase the pressure on national administrations in the coming years, asnd it coincides with the 2021-2027 spending programmes, and whereas the Member States will need to master different management modes linked to the implementation of the various funds;
Amendment 14 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital F
Recital F
F. whereas the Commission has made efforts to supported national authorities on the design and assessment of national plans, paying particular attention to the provisions concerning measures to protect RRF resources from fraud, corruption, conflicts of interest and double funding;
Amendment 16 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital H a (new)
Recital H a (new)
H a. whereas deficiencies in the validity and comparability of data and reporting technologies with varying degrees of digitalisation in the Member States continue to severely hamper the quality and reliability of information available;
Amendment 17 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital H b (new)
Recital H b (new)
H b. whereas the Arachne tool is voluntary and, although already largely used in cohesion policy and being introduced for agricultural spending, making it mandatory - as repeatedly requested by the Parliament - would be a major step forward, according to the Commission;
Amendment 18 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital K
Recital K
K. whereas on 1 June 2021 the EPPO finally started its operational activities as the final pillar of the anti-fraud architecture designed by the Union to enhance the protection of its financial interests; whereas the EPPO received 2 832 reports and opened 576 investigations 2021; whereas the EPPO requested more than EUR 152 million to be seized, and the seizure of more than EUR 147 million was granted; whereas the workload of the EPPO is expected to increase;
Amendment 19 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital K a (new)
Recital K a (new)
K a. whereas the EPPO with minimum resources under extreme time pressure, has started to work, adequately and in profit; whereas the EPPO’s budget for 2021 was less than forty five (45) million Euro, and the same year EPPO judges have granted the seizure of more than a quarter of a billion of Euro, illustrating that the return on investment is massive and immediate;
Amendment 22 #
N. whereas the unprecedented increase in EU spending under the NextGenerationEU (NGEU) recovery plan offers significant risks, including the potential for misuse of funds by organised criminals;
Amendment 23 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital N a (new)
Recital N a (new)
N a. whereas cooperation with international partners is crucial to protect EU funds spent outside Europe and the revenue side of the EU budget; whereas OLAF 2021 concluded administrative cooperation arrangements with two international partner authorities, the Prosecutor-General’s Office of Ukraine and the World Customs Organization (WCO); whereas OLAF 2021 organised online events to establish new operational contacts with investigative authorities in non-EU countries and to encourage the reporting of fraud and irregularities through EU Delegations around the world;
Amendment 24 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 5
Paragraph 5
5. Highlights that the new MFF 2021- 2027, the last programmes for which were adopted in 2021, coupled with the NextGenerationEU recovery plan, provides the EU with EUR 1.8 trillion, representing an unprecedented volume of resources; highlights that European Parliament, OLAF, the Court of Auditors, the European Public Prosecutors Office and the Commission itself may access relevant data and investigate the use of funds when it is necessary;
Amendment 26 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 5 a (new)
Paragraph 5 a (new)
5 a. The European Parliament and its Budgetary Control Committee should have a strong role in the RRF's governance, with regular structured dialogues enabling it to invite the Commission to discuss the implementation of the RRF. The Commission is required to take into account the views arising from this dialogue;
Amendment 30 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 9
Paragraph 9
9. Notes that the number of cases of fraud and irregularities reported by the competent EU and national authorities – 11 218 in total – remained stable in 2021 relative to 2020 (when there were 11 755 cases overall); points out that the value involved in these irregularities rose significantly to EUR 3.24 billion (having more than doubled +121%, from EUR 1.46 billion in 2020), due to a small number of large cases in certain Member States; expresses its grave concern about the increased amount involved in fraud and irregularities;
Amendment 32 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 13
Paragraph 13
13. Is concerned by the increasing threat to the EU budget posed by organised crime, including mafia-type organisations and oligarchic structures, trying to infiltrate the legal economy and perpetrating administrative irregularities with criminal methods that are more harmful and more difficult to investigate and remedy, increasingly making use of highly skilled intermediaries who are able to carry out extremely sophisticated, hard- to-detect European-fund fraud and by making money disappear through complex financial architectures, sometimes with the help of tax havens, making it particularly difficult to trace and recover funds;
Amendment 34 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 12 a (new)
Paragraph 12 a (new)
12 a. Calls on the Commission to focus more on the more severe issues, such as intentional manipulations in the tender criteria to favour the application of certain bidders, corruption in relation to bidder selection, and conflicts of interest in general, instead of minor formal errors;
Amendment 36 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 15
Paragraph 15
15. Recalls that the lack of specificefficient legislation onand actions to combat organised crime in many Member States isenable fertile ground for the growing number of cross-border activities in areas affecting the Union’s financial interests; calls on the Commission to promote the good practices of those countries in the EU that have an advanced regulatory framework for fighting organised crime;
Amendment 43 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 18
Paragraph 18
18. Believes that an enhanced and consistent level of protection for journalists and whistleblowers across the Union helps detect corruption and counter the spread of a subculture of impunity, silence and conspiracy; stresses the important role played by the media and investigative journalists in the fight against corruption;
Amendment 44 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 22
Paragraph 22
22. Remarks that China remained the major country of origin of goods affected by irregularities; stresses that a number of the cases investigated, which involved products sent from China, are emblematic of the challenges posed by China’s Belt and Road policy; is concerned by the recurrence of cases of absorption and circumvention of trade defence measures and by the difficulty of detecting them; calls on the Commission to adopt countermeasures and deploy them intensively to address unfair trade;
Amendment 49 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 26
Paragraph 26
26. Observes that for agriculture the analysis confirms a very low incidence of reported fraud in proportion to disbursements for direct payments, with the highest level observed for market measures in the fruit and vegetable sector and related to the promotion of agricultural products; notes however that the fraudulent irregularities in rural development related to the 2014-2020 programming period are progressively increasing;
Amendment 51 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 27
Paragraph 27
27. Notes that for the European Structural and Investment Funds (ESIF) implementing cohesion policy, the number of fraudulent irregularities reported for the 2014-2020 programming period remained in line with the number reported for the 2007-2013 programming period, while there was a fall in the number of non- fraudulent irregularities; remark with concern that financial amounts linked to fraudulent irregularities in the cohesion policy 2021 compared to the five year average of 2017-2021 increased with 186%;
Amendment 60 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 34
Paragraph 34
34. Calls on the Commission to design a regulatory frameworkStresses the need to address the lack of information on the owners and ownership structure of companies or groups of companies with the aim of making the current distribution of funds more transparent and helping to make significant improvements in more efficient detection of irregularities;
Amendment 61 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 34 a (new)
Paragraph 34 a (new)
34 a. Demands Member States to collect data on final recipients of funds and make this available upon request;
Amendment 66 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 37 a (new)
Paragraph 37 a (new)
37 a. Calls for a greater degree of digitalisation, interoperability of comparable data systems and harmonisation of reporting, monitoring and auditing in the EU; calls on the Commission to explore the possibility of using AI in the service of the protection of the EU’s financial interests;
Amendment 75 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 45 a (new)
Paragraph 45 a (new)
45 a. Recalls that OLAF was created not only for internal investigations but also for supporting Member States in external investigations; recalls that the subsidiarity principle prevents OLAF from launching investigations where Member States are in a better position to act, but this does not exclude OLAF from conducting analyses of recurring cases, trends and patterns and on how its ability to detect these phenomena has resulted in enhanced cooperation and successful actions;
Amendment 78 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 48
Paragraph 48
48. RecallDeplores that in 2021, out of an overall budget of EUR 44.9 million, the EPPO was forced to return EUR 9.5 million (about 20 %) to the EU budget, after having requested and obtained additional resources to hire statutory staff from the budgetary authority, because the clearance to hire them was not granted by the Commission;
Amendment 80 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 49
Paragraph 49
49. Reiterates its concerns related to permanent understaffing at OLAF, the EPPO, Europol and Eurojust and their lack of financial and human resources, as they need an adequate and predictable budget to be able to organise and carry out the work to the best of their ability; underscores that their workload has now further increased due to the adoption of the NextGenerationEU and the extraordinary funds supporting Ukraine; reminds the Commission and the Council that every euro spent on investigation and anti-fraud actions returns to the EU budget;
Amendment 87 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 50
Paragraph 50
50. Underlines the important role the Member States play in protecting the Union’s financial interests; is aware that, under the new delivery model adopted with the RRF, the Member States have the biggest responsibility in preventing and countering fraud, corruption, conflicts of interest and double funding; believes that an efficient cooperation between the EU and the national authorities is essential for proper delivery;
Amendment 88 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 50 a (new)
Paragraph 50 a (new)
50 a. Welcomes the adoption of Regulation (EU, Euratom) 2020/2092 on a general regime of conditionality for the protection of the Union budget; reiterates that it entered into force on 1 January 2021; welcomes the judgments of the CJEU of 16 February 2022 concerning the actions brought by two member states against the conditionality mechanism and its conclusions confirming that the EU does indeed have competences regarding the rule of law in the Member States and that the Rule of Law Conditionality Mechanism is in line with EU law;
Amendment 91 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 50 a (new)
Paragraph 50 a (new)
Amendment 94 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 50 b (new)
Paragraph 50 b (new)
50 b. Recalls that compliance with the rule of law and with Article 2 of the TEU are prerequisites for gaining access to funds, that the Rule of Law Conditionality Mechanism is fully applicable to the RRF and that no measures should be financed under the RRF that are contrary to the EU values enshrined in Article 2 of the TEU
Amendment 97 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 51
Paragraph 51
51. Believes that uneven and fragmentary legislation and digitalisation across EU Member States represents an obstacle to the effectiveness of the protection of the Union’s financial interests and obstruct the comparability, evaluation and mapping of the scale, nature and causes of fraud in the EU;
Amendment 103 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 52
Paragraph 52
52. Observes that the transposition of the PIF Directive is a precondition to enabling the EPPO and its partners to effectively carry out investigations and prosecutions; welcomes the first report of the Commission on the transposition of the Directive, published on 6 September 2021; regretnotes that, since then, and despite the transposition of the Directive by all the Member States, the Commission has opened infringement procedures against 17 Member States for not correctly transposing the PIF Directive12 ; _________________ 12 By the end of 2021, 13 out of the 14 procedures launched in 2019 were closed. In the subsequent conformity check, the Commission services assessed the compatibility of these notified national transposition measures with the Directive’s provisions and obligations. In December 2021, the Commission launched infringement proceedings for incorrect transposition against other eight Member States.
Amendment 115 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 60
Paragraph 60
60. Is aware that in its 2020 PIF Report the Commission made targeted recommendations to Member States aiming at enhancing cooperation and strengthening internal control frameworks; notes that attention was drawn to risk assessment and risk management, collection and analysis of data on irregularities and fraud and use of integrated and interoperable information and monitoring systems for the implementation of RRF and EU budget financed activities; regrets that not all the Member States have implemented such recommendations, and notes that some of them have systematically refused to do so; asks the Commission to enhance its monitoring actions for those Member States that have not provided acceptable justification for declining the follow up toimplemented the PIF recommendations;
Amendment 124 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 67 a (new)
Paragraph 67 a (new)
67 a. Recommends the suspension of budgetary support in non-EU countries, including candidate countries, where authorities manifestly fail to take genuine action against widespread corruption, while ensuring that the assistance reaches the civil population through alternative channels; calls for greater priority to be given to the fight against corruption in pre-accession negotiations and a focus on capacity building, such as via specialised anti-corruption bodies; calls on the Commission to send clear signals to candidate countries that a backlash against rule of law standards is jeopardising or delaying the accession to the EU; regrets that according to ECA Special Report No 01/2022, EUR 700 million in financial support for the improvement of the rule of law in the Western Balkans provided by the EU between 2014 and 2020 had little impact on fundamental reforms;
Amendment 125 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 67 b (new)
Paragraph 67 b (new)
67 b. Highlights that cooperation with international partners is crucial to protect EU funds spent outside Europe and the revenue side of the EU budget; welcomes that OLAF 2021 concluded administrative cooperation arrangements with two international partner authorities, the Prosecutor-General’s Office of Ukraine and the World Customs Organization (WCO); welcomes that OLAF 2021 organised online events to establish new operational contacts with investigative authorities in non-EU countries and to encourage the reporting of fraud and irregularities through EU Delegations around the world;