On Thursday 22 October, in its annual report on the financial year 2019, the European Court of Auditors stated that the 41 EU agencies could increase their networking and coordination activities to improve their contribution to implementing EU policies.
“The EU agencies are playing an increasingly important role and provide added value to the EU. We are suggesting that they could function better if they created networks”, Alex Brenninkmeijer, a member of the Court, told a few journalists the previous day.
He mentioned a number of recommendations contained in the report: - allow more flexibility in the allocation of budgetary resources to the EU agencies: some agencies, such as the European Medicines Agency (EMA) and the ECDC, lack resources, while others are unable to use up their entire annual budget; - simplify the governance of certain agencies and let them be more accountable for their activities.
On the first point, Brenninkmeijer mentioned the possibility of making provision for a specific budget to be allocated according to the situation on the ground.
On the financial front, the EU auditors confirmed the positive results witnessed in previous years (see EUROPE 12349/10), giving an unqualified opinion on the 2019 accounts of each of the 41 agencies audited. They found almost no issues with the legality and regularity of transactions relating to the agencies’ revenues and payments, with the exception of some problems involving payments made by the Agency for the Cooperation of Energy Regulators (ACER) and the European Asylum Support Office (EASO).
The report can be found at: https://bit.ly/2HrPWPT (Original version in French by Mathieu Bion)