Cooperation with the Member States

• Author: European Anti-Fraud Office (European Commission)
• Pages: 43-43

43

th Annual Report on the Protection of the European Union’s financial interests — Fight against fraud 2018

. Cooperation with

the Member States

The Advisor y Committee for Coordinatio n of Fraud Prevention (COCOLA F) brings together

Commission (OL AF) and Mem ber State exper ts. It provi des a forum for discussi ng the

main developmen ts in the f‌igh t against fraud an d the prepara tion of this repor t, as re -

quired by Art icle 325(5) TFEU. I ts work is stru ctured aro und four working gr oups and a

plenary sess ion (see Figure 11).

The repor ting and analy sis subgroup of COCO LAF provid ed the ideal foru m for discuss-

ing and f‌ine-t uning the ana lyses present ed in the SWD o n the ‘statist ical evaluatio n of

irregularities’.

Within the fra ud prevention s ubgroup work wa s starte d to develop a meth odology for

country pr of‌iles describ ing the anti-fr aud systems of t he Member State s. This tool will

continue to be d eveloped over the next years .

FIGURE  : COCOL AF STRUCT URE AND S UBGROUPS

The anti-fra ud coordination s ervices (A FCOS) meet annu ally under the ch airmanship of

OLAF. In 2018, the me eting took pla ce on 16 October. OL AF’s investig ative cooperat ion

with AFCOS — in p articular d uring on-th e-spot chec ks — and informa tion exchang e

were discussed . Other topics on the agen da included conf‌identia lity of OLAF f‌inal rep orts,

overarching coo peration bet ween the nation al AFCOS and t he Hercule ann ual work pro-

gramme for 2019.

The OLA F AntiFraud Co mmunicator s’ Network (OA FCN) brings tog ether communi cation

of‌f‌icers and sp okespersons fr om OLAF ’s operational par tners in t he Member State s. In

2018, OLAF or ganised a joint press conference w ith Swedish customs on the f‌i ght against

counterfeit ing in industrial goods an d did a guest posting exercise o n Twitter with L atvian

AFCOS to prese nt the 2nd edition of their suc cessful campaign encour aging people to say

no to fraud.

Member States a nd the Commissio n exchanged vi ews on anti-frau d matters in me et-

ings of the Coun cil’s Working Part y on Combating Fr aud (GAF) un der the Bulgaria n and

Austrian Presidencies.

Plenary

Reporting and analysis

of fraudulent and

other irregularities

Fraud prevention

OLAF anti-fraud

communicators'

network (OAFCN)

Anti-fraud

coordination services

meeting