Ladies and gentlemen, let me say a few words.

I would like to draw your attention to...

I would like to stress that...

There is one more point...

In conclusion...

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There are many examples of this. In the United Kingdom the SFO (Serious Fraud Office) has multidisciplinary investigation teams; in 1992 the NCIS (National Criminal Intelligence Service) was set up to combat serious crime, including economic crimes. In Belgium the Central Office for the Prevention of Organized Economic and Financial Crime consists of members of the Criminal Investigation Department, the Gendarmerie and the CSC (a high level control committee) and, since the Tax Act of 30 March 1994, officials responsible for customs, direct taxation and VAT. A general directive states that the Office's powers extend to all serious financial, economic or tax offences involving organised crime, and in particular fraud to the detriment of the financial interests of the European Union.

Similarly, Italian legislation should shortly assign to the Guardia di Finanza the essential task of monitoring and investigating Community fraud, thus making it a key instrument of a policy laid down at the highest level, namely the Interministerial Committee for the Prevention of Community Fraud. This Committee was set up in the spirit of Article 209a of the Treaty on the European Union, by Act NQ 142of 19 February 1992, and is under the Prime Minister's own department for the coordination of Community policies, where the operational unit of the Guardia di Finanza established by Decree of the Prime Minister, dated 11 January 1995, is located.

As regards the administrative organisation of fraud Tprevention, the national reports indicate on the whole that there is a great contrast between the protection of revenue and the protection of expenditure. Where revenue is concerned, customs and tax authorities have had long experience of fraud prevention and apply the same control methods to Community revenue as have proved their worth in decades of use at national level. Both national and Community revenue may thus be said to enjoy a high level of protection.

There are few examples of departments responsible for the monitoring of Community expenditure which are both independent of the administrative authorities and experienced in the field of fraud prevention. According to the national reports, controls tend to be the responsibility of bodies whose work involves the general auditing of government departments and the verification of accounts rather than detailed checks of Community expenditure.

Between the forces of dissuasion represented by high-level institutions, on the one hand, and the primary checks carried out by the administrator himself, on the other, there is room for specific fraud-prevention controls carried out by specialists in the fight against organised financial crime, who should be independent of the special staff administering funds and who should hold wide-ranging powers of investigation. If the controls applicable to expenditure could be raised to the level of those currently applied to revenue, the protection of both national and Community finances would be considerably enhanced.