The European Parliament decided on Wednesday 28 April to give discharge to the European Commission for the implementation of the European Union’s general budget for the financial year 2019.
Adopting (556 votes in favour, 82 against and 60 abstentions) an amendment tabled by the EPP Group, Parliament urges the Commission to provide without further delay a list of the top 50 individual final beneficiaries as well as a complete list of all subsidies received by all companies in the Agrofert Group during the period 2014-2020 and calls on Member States to cooperate fully with the Commission in providing the data necessary to analyse and create this list.
The Greens/EFA Group considered that the Commission had clearly identified conflicts of interest regarding the Czech Prime Minister and breaches of both EU and Czech law. “EU subsidies to his company Agrofert after February 2017, when a local conflict of interest law came into force, are considered irregular and must therefore be returned. The Commission and the EU Council must act!”, according to this Group (see EUROPE 12706/22).
Frontex. As expected, Parliament postponed its decision (528 votes in favour of postponement, 127 against and 43 abstentions) on the discharge to the Executive Director of the European Border and Coast Guard Agency (Frontex) on the implementation of the Agency’s budget for 2019.
Parliament: - identifies shortcomings in the Agency’s measures on transparency, prevention and management of conflicts of interest and whistleblowers protection; - notes the repeated allegations of complicity by the Agency in fundamental rights violations by the Greek authorities regarding its involvement in the pushback of migrants; - expresses concern about the five cases of harassment reported by the Agency in 2019 and notes that new allegations of harassment have been made more recently by whistleblowers. (Original version in French by Lionel Changeur)