Brussels, 01/03/2007 (Agence Europe) - On Tuesday 27 February, finance ministers from EU member states decided to recommend that the European Parliament gives a discharge to the European Commission for executing its Community budget for the 2005 tax year. This recommendation, the same as that granted for the discharge on Community agency budgets, is being sent to the EP to help finalise its work on the 2005 budget discharge.
In its recommendation, the Ecofin Council regrets that the Statement of Assurance (SOA) provided by the European Court of Auditors, “remains qualified for the areas where the supervisory and control systems are not implemented in a manner which provides adequate risk management” (EUROPE 9293). It welcomes the Court's verdict, according to which, areas such as revenue, commitments and payments for administrative expenditure and the pre-accession strategy (except for the agricultural pre-accession Sapard programme) are, as a whole, legal and in order. The Court and member states consider that the accounts are reliable and accurately reflect the financial situation of the European Communities and results of operations and treasury flows as of 31 December 2005.
Agriculture: the Council agrees with the Court that the Integrated Administration and Control System (IACS) is “an effective system to limit the risk of irregular expenditure” when it is correctly applied. It notes, however, as a whole, Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) spending contains a number of errors.
Structural Actions: the Council regretted that the Court had again revealed errors that occurred during the last programming period for these funds, and criticised the Commission for not having sufficiently exercised its supervisory role to prevent over-stated or ineligible reimbursement of expenditure.
Settlement of Accounts: the Council revealed that the Court and the Commission expressed diverging views on issues related to quality of procedure in settling accounts for agricultural spending and procedures for closing structural programmes, as well as on the interpretation of what should be done when errors are detected. In this context, the Commission is called on to present, before the end of September 2007, a report on recoveries made between 2000-06, that highlight the amounts recovered by member states and the Commission, as well as the amounts of open entitlements at the end of each year.
Internal Policy: the Council regrets the persistent shortcomings in payments made to beneficiaries, but does highlight the fact that progress has been made in certain areas.
External Actions: the Council is concerned at the significant level of errors persisting in these areas of expenditure.
Agencies: the Council also recommends that the EP grant a discharge to the directors of the 16 agencies and Community bodies (European Agency for Health and Safety at Work: the European Environment Agency; European Training Foundation, the European Foundation for Improving Living and Working Conditions, the European Agency for Maritime Safety; Eurojust; the European Food Safety Agency; the European Centre for Vocational Development and Training; The Translation Centre for the Bodies of the European Union; European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia; the Observatory of Drugs and Drug Addiction; European Aviation Safety Agency; European Agency for Reconstruction; European Network Information and Security Agency and the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control).
Kallas quite pleased with EP's preliminary work on discharge
The report by Salvador Garriga Polledo (EPP-ED, Spain) on the granting of a discharge to the Commission for the 2005 budget is expected to be adopted on 27 March during the budgetary control committee (Cocobu) in view of the plenary vote on 24 April. Polledo's draft report, discussed on Thursday 1 March at Cocobu, recommends that a discharge should now be given to the Commission for execution of the 2005 budget. Siim Kallas, the commissioner for administrative affairs and the fight against fraud, is pleased with this development. The commissioner, however, explained to Cocobu members that he did not agree with the following paragraphs from the draft report: this stipulates that the Commission's accountant did not respect certain accounting rules (new structures, presentation of the balance sheet and new ways of tackling pension rights for which the Communities are responsible). Kallas affirmed that these rules had been updated and corrected by the accountant in October 2006; the commissioner does not share the Court's affirmation (and taken up by MEPs) that the Commission has not adequately supervised quality control delegated to member states for spending on structural actions. Mr Kallas would like the efforts made in this area to be recognised; - the Cocobu once again called for the secretary general of the Commission to put out a statement of assurance on the statements of each of the directors general, when the summary report is being prepared. Mr Kallas was not of the opinion that this would improve the Commission accounts and pointed out that it was the directors general of the various directorates general who oversaw the internal control systems and who were responsible for financial management within their departments. “A summary report signed by the Secretary General would have the effect of reducing the importance of a document which, currently, is adopted by the whole College of Commissioners.” By adopting this summary report, the Commission “assumes its full political responsibility” for the management performed by its directors general and heads of unit, taking account of the remarks (both positive and negative) which, every year, are provided by these same directors and heads of unit in their annual report on their activities; - on ethics, the draft report “welcomes with satisfaction” the European initiative on transparency, but calls on the Commission to fill the gap which exists, by introducing, in the Commissioners' code of conduct, the fundamental ethical standards and guiding principles by which Commissioners are required to abide when appointing their teams, and in particular within their cabinets. Mr Kallas said he was bewildered by this remark, and opined that the treaty and the Commissioners' current code guaranteed the full independence of Commissioners. He said he was prepared to initiate a debate on the ethical rules to be observed by all the institutions, and called on the rapporteur to remove these remarks on the supposed gap to be filled. (lc)