Brussels, 17/04/2002 (Agence Europe) - With 11 in favour, 2 against and 2 abstentions, Tuesday morning, the Parliamentary committee on Budgetary Control (Cocobu) adopted the new report by the British Labour MEP, Eluned Morgan, on the discharge for 2000 for institutions other than the Commission, that will be examined by the EP at its next plenary session (Brussels, 24-25 April). This second report is much less critical that the previous one (that was sent back to Committee in theEP's April plenary session: see Europe of 11 April, p.11) regarding the Council's budget "common foreign and security policy" (CFSP) and the 1996 and 1997 budgets, yet disputed, of the Economic and Social committee (ESC).
Council: the Cocobu MEPs considered that the latest elements of answers supplied by the Council to the budgetary aspects of CFSP mean that the functioning of the Council need not be subjected to the discharge procedure. Thus, it is recommended that the EP respect current practice which, for several years now, dispenses the two branches of the budgetary authority from examining their respective expenditure. By 8 in favour and 6 against, Cocobu no longer even proposes "reconsidering" this "gentleman's agreement" that had previously, however, been decried. Cocobu simply observers that a substantial part of the Council budget "is now devoted to activities undertaken in the areas of foreign affairs, security and defence policy, as well as justice and home affairs and that, to date, expenditure in these areas have not been the subject of the same scrutiny applicable to the administrative and operational expenditure of the other institutions". Cocobu unanimously rejected an amendment by Germany's Heide Ruhe, on behalf of the Greens, that proposed re-establishing the polemical tone of the first version of the Morgan Report and to postpone discharge for the Council budget.
ESC: contrary to the guideline that seemed to emerge in plenary in April, Cocobu calls on the EP (10 in favour, 5 against) to give the ESC its discharge for the execution of its 1996 and 1997 budgets. This amendment was submitted by the MEPs Gianfranco Dell'Alba (Italian, Radical), Reno Imbeni (Italian PES), Jean-Louis Bourlanges (French, EPP-ED) and Michel Ange Scarbonchi (French, PES). You may recall that the ESC has been accused for a long time now of having delayed, in these years, measures that should have been taken following the observation of irregularities committed by close to a third of its members concerning the refund of airline tickets.
In addition, the Morgan Report also proposes discharging: - the ESC on the execution of the budget 1998 and 1999; - the Court of Justice, the Court of Auditors, the Committee of the Regions, the ESC, and the Ombudsman for the execution of their budgets 2000.