The European Parliament’s budgetary control committee today (8 October) approved a new regulation for the European Commission’s anti-fraud office (OLAF).

The regulation, which was endorsed by 19 votes in favour, none against, with two abstentions, will be put to the full Parliament in Strasbourg later this month and will take effect after adoption by the European Union’s Council of Ministers. Adoption is now seen as a formality because the text is a compromise agreed in July between the Commission, the Parliament and the member states.

The committee vote was initially scheduled for 26 September but was delayed while Martin Schulz, the Parliament’s president, sought last-minute legal advice on whether the compromise text was in line with national rules on parliamentarians’ immunity. 

Schulz and other MEPs, particular Klaus-Heiner Lehne, were concerned by what they saw as a more aggressive attitude from OLAF’s investigators as to their rights to search MEPs’ offices.

OLAF had previously sought the consent of an MEP under investigation before searching his or her offices. But the office tried to depart from that practice early in 2011, during the cash-for-influence scandal, when some MEPs were accused of accepting money in return for influencing legislation.

Attempts to add an immunity clause to the agreed text were rebuffed by the Commission and the member states as well as by other MEPs who feared the move would threaten the entire agreement.

The specifics of how OLAF might gain access to MEPs’ offices are now being left to a memorandum of understanding to be negotiated between the Parliament and OLAF.

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