1 Activity of the European
Anti-Fraud Office
| (24929)
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| Report of the European Anti-Fraud Office: Third activity report for the year ending June 2002
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| Legal base | — |
| Department | HM Treasury |
| Basis of consideration | Minister's letter of 10 February 2004
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| Previous Committee Report | HC 63-xxxv (2002-03), para 1 (29 October 2003)
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| To be discussed in Council | None planned
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| Committee's assessment | Politically important
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| Committee's decision | Already recommended for debate in European Standing Committee B (together with the triennial review of OLAF and other documents)
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Background
1.1 The European Anti-Fraud Office (OLAF) was established in 1999
as the successor to the Commission's Unit for the Coordination
of Fraud Prevention. OLAF's role is to protect the interests of
the European Union, and to fight fraud, corruption and any other
irregular activity, including misconduct within the European Institutions.
1.2 In October 2003 we recommended OLAF's third annual
activity report for debate in European Standing Committee B (together
with other documents relevant to the management of the Community's
financial resources).
The Minister's letter
1.3 When recommending the document for debate we
said that before then it would be helpful to have from the Minister
a comment as to why this document was not presented to the Council
and on whether that failure had any significance. The Financial
Secretary to the Treasury (Ruth Kelly) writes now in answer to
that request. She reminds us that there is a legislative requirement
for OLAF to report regularly to the Council (and to the European
Parliament, the Commission and the European Court of Auditors)
on the findings of its investigations. The Minister tells us:
"OLAF chose to respond to this requirement by
producing what it termed an Annual Activity Report. Each year
now the Activity Reports are published on the OLAF website, but
because there is no requirement for a formal publication, they
are not transmitted to Council in the same way as, say, the Commission's
annual Fight Against Fraud report.[1]
"It is important not to confuse the OLAF Activity
Report with the similarly named activity reports required under
Article 60(7) of the new (2003) Financial Regulation. There is
a requirement under that Article 60 to send the budgetary authority
a summary of authorising officers' annual activity reports, but
these are not the same as OLAF's report. Any confusion is understandable,
given they fulfil broadly similar purposes, but the relevant point
is that they have different regulatory origins.
"Decisions on whether a document should be debated
in Council are for the Presidencies at the time. For example the
Italian Presidency decided to discuss and draw conclusions on
the Commission Report evaluating the activities of the European
Anti-Fraud Office,[2] but
it did not find time to discuss any other counter fraud publication.
In practice of course all the counter fraud reports help to inform
other discussions: and there is also a close link between OLAF's
report and the ECA's annual report.
"I do not believe it is accurate to describe
the change of process as 'a failure'. It did result in less focus
on this particular document than the UK would have liked, but
nonetheless, this year there was very substantive discussion of
the OLAF evaluation report which covered many of the issues which
emerged in the Annual Activity Report. Importantly, both the Annual
Activity Report and Fight Against Fraud report were discussed
in the Cocolaf group, which is the anti-fraud [committee] chaired
by the European Commission and on which Member States are represented.
"Finally, even though the third OLAF Activity
report did not appear through the normal channels, we should have
taken it upon ourselves to deposit it and produce an Explanatory
Memorandum. The Treasury did this for OLAF's fourth activity report,[3]
which we shall also be debating on 23 February."
Conclusion
1.4 We are grateful to the Minister for this information.
It will be of interest to those taking part in the forthcoming
debate.
1.5 Meanwhile, we think it debatable whether publishing
its regular reports on a website adequately fulfils OLAF's legislative
duty of reporting. We invite the Minister to consider whether
this is a matter which needs to be taken up with OLAF.
1 Which is required under Article 280 of the Treaty. Back
2
See (24811) 11954/03: HC 63-xxxiii (2002-03), para 3 (15 October
2003). Back
3
See (25293) -: HC 42-ix (2003-04), para 6 (4 February 2004). Back
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