Brussels, 02/04/2003 (Agence Europe) - The annual report form the Commission's financial controller, adopted on Wednesday, traces a general approach of the ex ante controls carried out !n 2002 and looks a the setting up of reform and decentralisation of the Commission's financial control. This is the last annual report carried out by a central financial controller, as decentralised controls since the beginning of 2003 in each sector are fully responsible for managing funds and being accountable for them.
In 2002, around a million financial deals, in around 350,000 operations were submitted to the Financial Controller. Operations that were subject to control were around 90% of the value of commitment and 80% of the value of payments. The Financial Controller produced 2001 observations and requested 1400 corrections. In agricultural policy, three auditing missions were carried out. Observations concerning debt recoveries contributed to the setting up of an interservice group that will deal with ongoing recoveries of a total amount of EUR 2 billion. Monthly declarations about spending in the "Guarantees" section of EAGGF presents a low risk because of the shared management, at this stage of procedure and the fact that checks only focus on formal coherency. In the direct agricultural spending areas, the correction rate although high, is less than that for direct spending in other sectors. Most spending under structural instruments are managed by Member States. The quality of the multiannual management programme are managed by Member States. The quality of the multiannual programmes "are generally satisfactory". The most frequent problems have been the following: late payments, problems with the correct procedure under Article 53 of the Implementing Rules of the Financial Regulation (which required that a commitment proposal be submitted to Financial Control along with the draft fancying decision) and the failure to record estimates of debt or to issue recovery orders. In the area of external policies, the report notes the regulatory and control difficulties. In the administrative sector and expenditure on service providers or services, In expenditure on IT equipment and services, the correction rate was above average. In the field of own resources, problems have been detected concerning the expenses incurred in collection that Member States are entitled to deduct, and application of the additional 25% rate on amounts that had been noted before this rate came into effect, and which were recovered after this date. The lack of consistency and reliability of certain separate accounting figures have reportedly caused requests for information to be sent to Member States.
The report ends with an optimistic statement from the financial auditor who states that significant progress has been made in the implementation of the financial management aspects of reform and that the conditions required for it to be a success have been largely set in place. In order for it to be a full and lasting success, reform must be considered as a permanent process that requires a sustained effort at every level of the Commission as well as quality surveillance and monitoring, he said.