Brussels, 10/05/2011 (Agence Europe) - The European Parliament (EP) in Strasbourg on Tuesday 10 May decided to postpone the discharge for the Council of Ministers, the European Medicines Agency and the European Police College for financial year 2009. It did, however, grant discharge to the European Commission on implementation of the 2009 EU budget. In all, 39 reports were put to the vote.
With its adoption of the report by Jorgo Chatzimarkakis on the Commission budget (570 votes to 75, with 13 abstentions), the EP decided to grant the Commission discharge on the implementation of the general budget of the European Union for tax year 2009. Parliament, with the adoption of an ECR Group amendment, suggested that the Court of Auditors “should carry out occasional audits based on the same matrix model so that all 27 member states would be audited for a specific policy area which would allow the quality of controls to be evaluated comparatively”. The EP called on the administrations of EU member states to take political responsibility for the way Community money is spent in their country, with “mandatory national management declarations (NMDs) issued and signed at ministerial level”.
European Police College. The EP decided to postpone the discharge to the Director of the European Police College (CEPOL), due to the “persistent lack of compliance with the Financial Regulation”. CEPOL was the only agency for which a discharge was refused in 2008.
European Medicines Agency. MEPs postponed the discharge for the European Medicines Agency (EMEA). They believed there was no proper guarantee of the independence of experts hired to carry out scientific evaluations of human medicines and that some experts had conflicting interests in the case of the evaluation of the anorectic Benfluorex. The EP was also critical of EMEA's management of procurement procedures and its lack of criteria for recruiting staff. The decision to postpone discharge was carried by 626 votes to 23, with one abstention. The resolution was passed by 620 votes to 7, with 12 abstentions.
Council. Parliament postponed the discharge for the Council of Ministers until the autumn. The EP noted, however, the memorandum of understanding between the Parliament and the Council on their cooperation during their annual discharge procedure. It also noted the Council's readiness to treat the discharge procedure separately from the budgetary procedure, but reiterated that a distinction had to be maintained with regard to the different roles of the Parliament and the Council in the discharge procedure and that at no time and under no circumstances could the Council be anything other than fully accountable to the public for the funds entrusted to it.
EP. Parliament wanted to set an example in cost-cutting, with the adoption of the report by Ville Itälä (EPP, Finland) on the discharge to the President of the EP on implementation of the 2009 EP budget. Among savings measures, Parliament voted to have interpretation services for working group meetings provided automatically in only six languages (French, German, English, Polish, Spanish and Italian), with further languages to be made available only at the request of MEPs. Other demands include rules to limit long-distance journeys with Parliament's official cars and special rules to prevent MEPs from employing members of each other's families as assistants.
Speaking on behalf of the Council, Zsolt László Becsey accepted that several points remained to be cleared up in the positions of the Parliament and Council, including on the discharge for the Council. He hoped that this would not be disputatious or conducted through letters from one secretariat to another, but rather through open and constructive dialogue. President in office of the Council Becsey spoke of the statement of assurance, a complex matter which, he felt, would have to be discussed in the framework of the debate on the financial regulation.
The Commission will feel pleased with the EP decision to grant discharge. That said, Commissioner Algirdas Šemeta noted the points raised by the EP, in particular with regard to the management declaration, the automatic nature of sanctions (the number of interruptions of payments is increasing as the sections responsible become less timorous in applying sanctions), and recovery of funds. Šemeta acknowledged the considerable level of error in some cases, for example, in conclusion of public contracts, and the obsolete points which continue to be contained in staff regulations. All these points will be dealt with in a follow-up report which will be presented after summer, but the Commission is already “giving thought” to it, with the wishes of the EP being taken into account.
Ville Atälä called for serious consideration of the matter of the sessions in Strasbourg: the impression we are conveying to people is that we are throwing money out the window, he said, and the anti-European vote in his country was, he claimed, proof of that. (L.C./L.G./transl.rt)