EU's Anti-Fraud Office delivers 2019 report

The European Anti-Fraud Office (OLAF) released yesterday ”The OLAF report 2019”, summarizing the main achievements on their efforts to tackle fraud, corruption and mismanagement within the Union. According to the 60-page document, in 2019 alone, OLAF has recommended the recovery of €485 million to the EU budget. 

Some of the most striking trends revealed by OLAF investigations during the course of 2019 include collusion and manipulation of procurement, cross-border schemes that make detection more difficult, frequent targeting of projects in third countries, continued targeting of research funding and finally, smuggling and counterfeiting involving complex cross-border networks.

“We stand ready to deploy our arsenal of tools to ensure that not a cent of the EU budget is lost to fraud, that EU businesses do not suffer unfair competition from cheap substandard imports that do not pay taxes and that EU citizens are safe from dangerous products, including those that they increasingly buy online,” stated OLAF’s Director-General Ville Itälä.

As stated in their annual report, in 2019, OLAF concluded 181 investigations issuing a total of 254 recommendations to the relevant national and EU authorities. The EU’s Anti-Fraud bureau opened 223 new investigations, following 1174 preliminary analyses carried out by OLAF experts. In addition to investigation and coordination efforts, OLAF planned or provided support to 13 joint customs operations which led to significant progress in its bids to fight the illegal trade in tobacco products by helping national authorities seize more than 251.4 million cigarettes.

EU's watchdogs call for more transparency

Nevertheless, major issues remain to be addressed. Back in June, the EU watchdog Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO) and Global Health Advocates (GHA), delivered two reports condemning the way the EU is funding scientific research. The first report is called “More private than public: the ways Big Pharma dominates the Innovative Medicines Initiative”, and the second, “Research & Destroy: the factories of the industrial bioeconomy threaten the climate and biodiversity”.

According to these reports developed by Martin Pigeon (CEO) and Marine Ejuryan (GHA), industrial lobbies have managed to control the use of at least 3.6 billion of euro in European public research funds in the guise of innovation.

According to the authors, the reports reveal that “these lobby groups have prevented partnerships from meaningfully investing into research projects that address societal challenges such as epidemic preparedness or to invest in viable climate solutions; the EU research funds were mostly used to fund their own commercially profitable research projects instead.”