Brussels, 31/05/2000 (Agence Europe) - The European Commission adopted the proposal aimed at separating by the end of the year the functions of control before and after financial transactions, which have both hitherto been carried out by the financial auditor. The Commission thus proposed revising Article 24 of the financial regulation in order to create an internal Auditor. The auditor will be responsible for "a posteriori verification of the regularity of operations" and the "assessment of efficiency of management and control systems", that each Directorate General must set in place. The internal auditor will be at the head of the internal Audit Service, that the Commission began setting in place early May - but which depends (until revision of the regulation) on the financial controller. The procedure for recruiting the auditor has begun, without the Commission being able to say when he/she will be appointed.
The internal auditor and its service will be independent of the financial controller and of the DG on Financial Control, which will only be responsible for the prior visa. We recall that this visa will be progressively decentralised in the Directorates-General and that the adoption of overall revision of the financial regulation should allow the visa to be done away with. The current financial controller, Isabella Ventura, is the subject of a so-called Article 50 procedure, which will make her leave the European Commission quite rapidly.
The Commission trusts that its proposal will be approved by the Council and the Parliament before the end of the year. This proposal should be part of the overall proposal for revision of the financial regulation, but was kept separate as the overall proposal, announced for the month of May, will not be ready before end June or early July. It will aim to modify (and also gather in a single document, applying to all institutions) the basic financial and budgetary rules, which had become dispersed as the supplements and exemptions to the 1977 financial regulation were adopted, as well as the different interinstitutional and practical agreements. Texts of application would specify the details of implementation of the basic rules.