Kwijting 2006: tweede hoorzitting over structuurfondsen eind februari (en)

Another hearing will be needed before any decision can be taken on the 2006 budget discharge for the Commission. Members of the EP Budgetary Control Committee regard the replies they have been given on the management of the structural funds as unsatisfactory at this stage.

The coordinators of the Budgetary Control Committee have decided to call Commissioners Hübner and Spidla back to provide further information on the management of the structural funds in 2006. Errors are committed in the case of around 12% of these funds, no less than €3.89 billion, according to the Court of Auditors' annual report. The new hearing is scheduled for 25 February.

Tuesday's appearance before the committee by Commission vice-president Siim Kallas shed little light on the remaining murky areas, although Mr Kallas welcomed the "best statement of assurance ever issued by the Court of Auditors". The Commissioner was also confident that the sums recovered would cancel out the 12% of errors.

A 2000-page reply

Enthusiasm was more muted among MEPs.  Dan Jorgensen (PES, DK), rapporteur on the 2006 discharge, believed the replies provided by the Commission so far were inadequate on several points: in addition to the structural funds, external aid is shrouded in mystery. The rapporteur also expressed disappointment at the "2000 pages of documents on European aid distributed in Iraq", which had in any case been forwarded to Parliament late.

On the question of "national declarations", a hobby horse of Parliament's over the last three years (see link below), the rapporteur asked whether the Commission supported this idea. The EP's report on the 2005 discharge called on the Commission to put forward a proposal. After describing the difficulties he was encountering with the Council on this matter, Commissioner Kallas said he was personally in favour of such declarations but that progress was slow.

Positive statement of assurance, outstanding commitments _ and next step

Jan Mulder (ALDE, NL) emphasised that the progress made in recent years on supervising the management of EU expenditure was "more than modest". He believed the Commission was "still far from the goal laid down by President Barroso: to receive a positive DAS" [DAS = statement of assurance].

Lastly, the shadow rapporteur of the EPP-ED group, Finnish MEP Alexander Stubb, called for a resolution of the endemic problem of "outstanding commitments" (projects for which committed funds have not been paid out).

The extraordinary hearing on the structural funds, if confirmed for 25 February in Brussels, should trigger significant progress, as rapporteur Jorgensen stated in his closing words: "Failing clear answers to the simple questions we are asking, a postponement of the Commission's discharge seems to me unavoidable".

21/01/2008

Committee on Budgetary Control

Chair : Herbert Bösch (PES, AT)