These schemes are increasingly popular in Canada, where cross-border fraud has become a thriving industry, even as the United States authorities have made inroads against telemarketing crime.

Common cross-border frauds are pushed by telemarketers, spam emailers and misleading advertisements.

The FTC is working toward its goals by participating in an international cooperation network to combat cross-border fraud and by promoting effective market-oriented consumer protection and privacy policies.

The fight must target cross-border fraud, corruption and crimes against the financial interests of the European Community just as much as computer crime.

It is precisely against this cross-border fraud that measures that are the same across different European countries are needed.

The role of the European Prosecutor would be to tackle cross-border fraud by means of the adoption of specific rules making it possible to combat that fraud, including the definition of crimes.

It is extremely difficult to prosecute cross-border fraud, partly because evidence collected in one Member State does not count in another Member State.

While we should not claim any competences where we do not have them, matters such as internal market rules, the fight against racism and cross-border fraud do indeed fall within the EU's remit.

Furthermore, the European VAT system, as currently designed and implemented by Member States, is often the subject of cross-border fraud, something which costs billions of euro in tax revenue.

Let us focus on reducing the administrative burden for small and medium-sized businesses and let us help EU citizens who have been affected by this cross-border fraud.