Parliament Vows To Fight Corruption
Brussels -- Wednesday 31 August 2011
The European Commission adopted a package in June which it hopes will strengthen its contribution in the fight against corruption, which is estimated to cost the EU €120 bn every year.
Corruption is a blight on businesses and individual citizens and comes in many forms: from bribery and extortion to favouring people in employment, it is even claimed to have contributed to the current financial crisis.
Whilst I think it's laudable that the Commission is taking these measures I think there are a number of factors at play here.
The first is that there are existing rules and regulations in place to tackle many of these problems - we do not necessarily need new rules, but we need the will to implement them correctly.
Secondly, if the Commission are to set up these new initiatives, they must focus primarily on EU affairs, and by that I mean the misuse of EU funds, which is seemingly commonplace.
I mentioned in LIBE Committee today the example of the misappropriation of funds in Bulgaria, but this is only one of many alleged examples of abuse.
Year after year the auditors fail to sign off the EU's accounts - why? Corruption within the Member States may not be the only answer but it plays a large part.
Lastly, the European Institutions must be true to their word and become more transparent.
We need the political will to tackle this, but we need to look inwardly as well.
There have been high profile cases of MEPs and officials abusing their positions.
European politics needs to become more transparent and more intolerant of corruption, because the cases of embezzlement and nepotism within the Institutions is incredibly damaging to our work.
All in all, I'm pleased, but not entirely surprised, that the Commission's anti-corruption presentation found support today amongst MEPs - it's a start at least.
