Up to 10% of the community budget is subject to fraud, according to various studies. Every year, the Court of Auditors makes reports on fraud and maladministration.

The annual Budget of the European Union is above 100 Billion Euro and rising.

Transparency [1] and a double-entry book keeping system could help.

The drafting of the EU Constitution has given a possiblity for making Council of Ministers more transparent. Indeed, the Constitution treaty proposes openness in all official Council meetings discussing new EU laws - but the Constitution will not yet open the law-making committees and give citizens a real insight into how their laws are decided in these committees that adopt 85% of all EU-laws.

Under the Greek Presidency in 2003, for example, only 8 Council meetings out of about 170 were open to the public. By today's standards, "open to the public" means that people can watch the council meetings from a room in the basement over TV transmission, and it happens that the transmission of the audio signal can be interrupted at any time, yet the meeting can go on and there is no recording of what has been said.

The standard of plenary sittings of the European Parliament is meanwhile, that they are streamed over the Internet in two different streaming formats in addition to the public sitting which can be observed directly from a separate gallery. Also, nearly all sittings of Parliamentarly Committees are observable by the public, except for certain, defined matters such as requests for removal of the parliamentary immunity of a Member of the European Parliament.

The previous European Ombudsman, Jacob Söderman, has proposed a transparency and administrative reform. The European Parliament has proposed that all meetings and documents be open unless a ⅔ majority decide otherwise.

This proposal has assembled support from 200 members and substitute members of the Convention, including all the members of the national parliaments, but it was still not inserted into the EU Constitution by the Praesidium.

This chance has been missed so far and could only be taken up again if a member state demands an additional treaty to be ratified in parallel to the Counstitional Treaty which requires transparency in the Council of Ministers in the form of public meetings made standard for all working group meetings, public and timely access to council documents and stricter requirements for classifying documents as limited-access ("LIMITE" - non-public) and requiring that all documents regarding legislative acts always have to be public.

In addition, the European Commission has to be put under more public access in form of public access to documents and reports and it has to be made clear, that the monitoring of the Commission has to be done by an body which is independent from the Commission and controlled by the European Parliament such as OLAF.

This can also be asked in referenda for the ratification of the Constitutional treaty.

The Eurostat scandal

In 1999, it came to light that Eurostat officials proposed fake sums of money to be used for contracts and then spent leftover money as they pleased - this practice was used only with certain 'trustworthy' contractors.

The scandal resulted in the European Parliament considering to send all commissinoners home, but it wasn't neccesary to do this formally. The Santer Commission stepped back on its on afterwards.

Mrs Schmidt-Brown, the Danish employee of Eurostat who "blew the whistle" on financial irregularities within the organisation is now living on an invalidity pension - a direct consequence of the psychological pressure she endured from her then bosses at Eurostat.

Whistleblowers

Whistleblowers are civil servants who go public with information about fraud and misadministration.

Paul van Buitenen

Paul van Buitenen was the Dutch civil servant who became the whistleblower whose allegations of fraud and mismanagement within the European Commission in 1998 led to the resignation of Commission of Jacques Santer .

He had tried to change the system from inside but was prevented.

For his actions, Van Buitenen was disciplined and suspended by the EU. Eventually he was (at least partially) forgiven and he returned to the organisation in 2003, in a different capacity. Nevertheless, he would later leave for good in order to eventually become a Member of the European Parliament.

Pledging to continue his fight against fraud and bureaucratic inefficiency on the European level, Van Buitenen founded a party named Europa Transparant, ran with it for the European Parliament in the 2004 elections (in the member state the Netherlands) and won two seats.

Marta Andreasen

Marta Andreasen, a Spanish accountant, was employed in 2002 to head the Commission’s accounts department of 130 staff. She criticised the accounting system for being open to fraud and also criticised the Commission because it does not have a single system, but uses Excel spreadsheets for producing figures which allows figures to be altered without trace. Additionally, the fundamental double bookkeeping system, which is mandatory for all private companies, is still missing in the EU.

Mrs. Andreasen raised her criticisms internally, but made no progress with her superior. She then wrote to Commissioner Schreyer and the Commission President, Prodi. She again received no answers and so went to members of the EU Parliament’s Budget Control Committee. At this stage the press began to report the criticisms.

She was suspended from her job by the Commission and is now undergoing a disciplinary procedure that may result in dismissal. On December 12, 2004, Mrs. Andreasen was officially fired from her job.

External links

• SOS-Democracy - Parliamentary inter-group fighting for more democracy and transparency in the EU. It unites members from all political groups of the EU Parliament.
• Comitology
• PDF on EU law about transparency and how to get EU documents
• Jens-Peter Bone's list of cases