Commissioner wants stronger agriculture fraud blacklist

European Union Anti-fraud Commissioner Siim Kallas has called for a tough approach in reforming a blacklist of agricultural businesses or agencies found defrauding Community farm spending programmes, despite member state opposition. Kallas told a seminar hosted by Transparency International and EU anti-fraud unit OLAF that the EU blacklisting system should be strengthened because national governments “were reluctant to exchange information about doubtful companies.” He added: “We should think about developing a completely new and modern blacklisting mechanism”, to be applied throughout most EU programmes.