Villiers (PPE-DE). – Mr President, I wish to give an explanation of vote to explain my extreme concern over the Eurostat scandal and the European Commission's failure to take responsibility.

Five years ago, almost to the day, the Santer Commission was forced to resign because it was 'difficult to find anyone with the slightest sense of responsibility'. That caused the collapse of the previous Commission. Nothing has changed, because no one has been prepared to take responsibility for Eurostat.

Despite the fact that EUR 5 million has gone missing; despite the fact that money has been channelled into bogus research by bogus companies, some of which it appears are owned by senior members of Eurostat; despite the fact that taxpayers' money appears to have been channelled into staff perks – such as a riding school and a volleyball team – we have seen no resignations from the Commission over this issue and no acceptance of responsibility. Mr Solbes Mira's response seems to be just that he did not know what was happening. This seems to be a charter for Commissioners just to tell their civil servants not to inform them of the dubious activities going on in their departments, so that, on the basis of the Commission's analysis, the Commissioner will get off scot-free.

We know that Mr Solbes Mira has resigned from the Commission but not over this issue, so there is still a complete failure on the part of the European Commission to take responsibility for this waste of taxpayers' money. That is a matter of extreme concern to me and my British Conservative colleagues. I hope that before our vote on the motion of censure in May the Commission will accept its responsibility and do something serious to take responsibility for Eurostat and to clean up the EU and stop the unacceptable waste and abuse of taxpayers' money.