3. Welcomes the report from the Commission to the European Parliament and the Council on the Protection of the European Union’s financial interests - Fight against fraud - Annual Report 2011 (‘the Commission’s annual report’); regrets, however, that the report is limited to the data rep
orted by the Member States; points out that Member States use different definitions for similar types of offence and do not all collect similar and detailed statistical data following common criteria, which makes it difficult to collect reliable and comparable statistics at EU level; regrets, therefore, that it is not possible to evaluate the actual ove
...[+++]rall scale of irregularities and fraud in individual Member States or to identify and discipline those Member States with the highest level of irregularities and fraud as has been repeatedly requested by Parliament; urges, therefore, that standard evaluation criteria for irregularities and fraud be laid down in all Member States and combined with appropriate penalties for those guilty of infringement;