Brussels, 14/02/2013 (Agence Europe) - It was by qualified majority on Tuesday 12 February that the Economic and Financial Affairs (ECOFIN) Council recommended the European Parliament to give a discharge to the Commission on the implementation of the European Union budget for the financial year 2011. Three countries (the United Kingdom, Sweden and the Netherlands) voted against because they considered the level of errors revealed by the European Court of Auditors to be too high. In a statement, these three countries “regret strongly that, for the 18th year in succession, the European Court of Auditors has been unable to grant a positive unqualified statement of assurance on the EU budget as a whole and, furthermore, that the overall error rate in recent years has increased, remaining significantly high above the acceptable threshold of 2 %”.
The Council remains concerned by the fact that - according to the Court of Auditors' overall assessment (in its annual report last November) - payments made as part of the 2011 budget continued to be affected by a significant level of error, and that supervisory and control systems for payments continued to be deemed only “partially effective” in ensuring the legality and regularity of transactions, the Council recommendation states. The Council also regrets that the most likely error rate for payments as a whole increased from 3.7% in 2010 to 3.9% in 2011. In addition, it notes that 0.1% of the increase results from the inclusion for the first time of cross-compliance in the calculation of the error rate. With regard to agriculture, the Council regrets that 39% of transactions audited by the Court of Auditors in 2011 were affected by error and that, overall, the most likely error rate amounted to 2.9%. The Council encourages the member states to further improve the quality of the land parcel identification system (LPIS). The Council considers that the error rate of 6% estimated by the Court of Auditors for the regional policy, energy and transport chapter remains too high. Furthermore, the Council regrets that with 62% of the transactions being affected by error, member states should have been in a position to detect at least some of these prior to certification of the expenditure to the Commission.
The Council also recommends that the discharge be granted to the directors of 30 European agencies, six European executive agencies and seven joint undertakings for the execution of their 2011 budgets. (LC/transl.fl)