Brussels, 22/02/2006 (Agence Europe) - In Brussels on 21 February, the European Parliament's Budgetary Control Committee (Cocobu) discussed its draft report on the discharge of the 2004 budget for European institutions other than the European Commission but including the European Court of Justice. To ensure transparency, it wants the Court of Justice to rapidly ensure judges are forced to declare financial interests, like stocks and shares, consultancy work, and the like. Also to boost transparency, Cocobu wants greater publicity to be made of the 1967 Council Regulation, amended in 2005 (No. 202/205) on the remuneration and other payments made to the President of the Court, judges and the Clerk, which it says should also be published on the Court's website. (Their salary is 104%, 1005 and 90% respectively of the highest level for a European civil servant, namely 16,200 euros a month.)
Cocobu then looked at real estate, and the project described back in 1999 as 'grandiose' (see EUROPE No. 7512 ) of which one of the architects is Dominique Perrault, who designed the big library in Paris. Like the Paris library, this project is in a circle with two big towers. The European Parliament committee is asking the Court of Justice to provide a written description of measures taken to check invoices and control the huge real estate budget (estimated in 2000 to be worth some 296 924 590 euros (at 2000 prices). It also wants a list of people who will have to bear any possible overshooting of the costs.
Cocobu also looked at the Court's procedures. Unlike other institutions, there are no Statements of Assurance signed by the Authorising Officer (a kind of signing off of implementation of the budget). On 21 June 2005, in the way of authorisation, Clerk Roger Grass signed a memorandum assuring the President of the Court that the accounts were in order.
During the debate, rapporteur Nils Lundgren (Independence and Democracy, Sweden) said he had not overlooked the issue of use of company (Court in this case) cars and could add this to his report if the EP's committee members so desired. The chair of the meeting said that the question of private use of official cars either had to be considered for both institutions where it arose, namely the Court of Auditors and the Court of Justice, or neither of them. He added that it is not possible to consider it in the report on the Court of Auditors (where it is set out in black and white), and neither for the Court of Justice. Alexander Stubb (EPP-ED, Finland) rapporteur for the discharge of the 2003 budget, regretted that the use of cars and chauffeurs was such waved about like a red flag each year when there were far more important things to worry about.
Private use of official cars, a bone of discord between Court of Justice and European Parliament.
During the debate over the 2006 budget, Cocobu suggested an amendment whereby 10% of monies earmarked for judges' mission expenses would only be released where there was a guarantee that the use of Court of Justice chauffeurs had not been abused. Unlike the Court of First Instance (where judges have to make do with a pool of chauffeurs), every Court of Justice judge and advocate general has their own driver. The President of the Court of Justice, Vassilios Skouris, reacted very strongly to the President of the European Parliament, Josep Borrell, over what he believes is a slur on the image of the Court. Borrell responded that the Cocobu amendment had been rejected but the idea of settling this issue did not come from the Budgetary Control Committee alone, but from the European Parliament as a whole. The resolution adopted by the European Parliament on 27 October 2005 (the Dombrovskis Report) asked the Court to amend its administrative decision of 31 March 2004 by 1 November 2005, to rule out the private use of official cars. Another resolution, adopted by the European Parliament on 12 April 2005 (Stubb Report on the discharge of the 2003 budget), said that private use of official cars was an undisclosed benefit-in-kind that the European Parliament felt was inappropriate.