Europees Parlement wil goedkeuring budget Raad van Ministers uitstellen (en)

MEPs voted Thursday to postpone approving the EU Council of Ministers' spending for 2007. A majority 571 against 41 of MEPs with 21 abstentions)of Parliament's plenary says Council's administrative spending had in fact become increasingly operational, and that Parliament should therefore have scrutiny over the Council budget. Yet the Council has consistently refused to give the Budgetary Control Committee the facts.

Bulk of EU budget spending approved

Although the European Parliament also decided to postpone granting discharge to the Police College for lack of information all other institutions and agencies got their approval, Discharge to the Commission, which, with the Member States, is responsible for spending the bulk of the EU budget on various policies.

No DAS: Member States should check better

In its discharge resolution Parliament did voice grave concern that the European Court of Auditors had not been able to issue a "Declaration of Assurance" for the fourteenth consecutive year, although there were clear improvements in some areas. MEPs urged Member States to co-operate better in checking on EU spending and recovering incorrectly spent funds. To this end, it has repeatedly advocated that Member States sign off such expenditure themselves.

Council operations

Citing its 2002 discharge resolution, which referred to the Council's "increasingly operational nature of expenditure, financed under the Council's administrative budget, in the fields of foreign affairs, security and defence policy, and justice and home affairs" and referring to the creation of a financial mechanism called Athena to administer the financing of "operations having military and defence implications", MEPs said that the "administrative expenditure of the Council ought to be scrutinized in the same way as that of the other European institutions as part of the discharge procedure".

They therefore regretted that the Council, "unlike other institutions", does not submit an annual activity report to Parliament. The resolution goes on to list Parliament's attempts to elicit information from the Council on its budget execution and a number of specific questions about the Council budget.

General EU budget

Noting once again that "some 80% of EU expenditure is administered by the Member States" and that the European Court of Auditors (ECA) has not been able to approve the expenditure for the 14th time in a row, MEPs stressed that the annual summaries of audits, which Member States have to provide as from 2008, are a first step but that what is really needed are national management declarations.

MEPs noted that according to the ECA a large number of errors as well as less than effective monitoring and control systems were caused by "complicated or unclear legal requirements". They therefore urged the Commission to accelerate its simplification exercise. But Member States should be compelled to make the necessary improvements in their control systems, "in particular by imposing payment suspensions and financial corrections", they added.

Bulgaria and Romania

MEPs voice support for the temporary suspension of funding to Bulgaria and Romania. They called for quarterly reports from the Commission until the situation is clarified, but also for special reports on the current management and control of all EU funds in Bulgaria and Romania. The report on Romania should also describe progress made in the fight against corruption, they added.

MEPs even said that the Commission has not treated the accession of Romania and Bulgaria with the necessary seriousness and that "the Commission disregarded the Copenhagen criteria and misled public opinion and Parliament about the readiness of these Member States to the detriment of the reputation of the Union and the steady development of the Member States in question".

Agriculture

MEPs are concerned at the very high error level in agriculture - 20% of payments at final-beneficiary level audits turned out to be incorrect. The problems in Greece with the implementation of the Integrated Administration and Control System were considered to be "unacceptable". Many Member States had problems with control systems for rural development funds. According to the Court of Auditors, the Netherlands, Portugal, the UK, France and Spain showed inadequacies with the Single Payment Scheme, whereas Greece, Italy Spain, the UK, France and the Netherlands suffered from a number of systemic shortcomings with regard to area-aid eligibility checks.

Structural funds

Important problems exist also with the structural policy funds, which show a rate of at least 11% not being properly reimbursed. MEPs are concerned that almost all the financial corrections that had to be imposed under the European Regional Development Fund from 2000 to 2006 were accounted for by Spain and Italy, and to a lesser extent the United Kingdom. Similarly, nearly all corrections under the Cohesion Fund were accounted for by Greece and Spain. For the Social Fund, it was mainly Spain and Italy who accounted for the corrections needed.

Good news in research

There was also good news: the error rate in research and technological development has gone down dramatically, to just over 2%.

NGOs

The European Parliament noted the growing role and number of NGOs in the administration of EU funds. It asked the Commission to review the operating grants for NGOs' headquarters in Brussels and to gradually diminish them, as laid down in the Financial Regulation. It also wants the Commission to compile by the end of this year a comprehensive list of all NGOs which receive EU funds.

Approval for EP spending

The European Parliament's political authorities also got the stamp of approval, although MEPs made a number of comments and recommendations. Noting that the voluntary pension fund for Members had an actuarial deficit of €30.92 million at the end of 2007, Parliament voted to say that "under no circumstances will Parliament in the prevailing economic situation provide extra money from the budget to cover the fund's deficit". Earlier, the same week the Bureau of the Parliament (its President and 14 Vice-Presidents) had confirmed its decision to raise the pension fund's retirement age, scrap the option of going in early retirement on a reduced pension and to end the possibility of taking out 25% of acquired pension rights in a lump sum. These measures were taken to improve the fund's liquidity and to avoid covering its actuarial deficit with taxpayers' money.

MEPs asked the Secretary-General to make an "overall analysis of all costs generated by the geographical dispersion of parliamentary activities in Strasbourg and Brussels" and they asked for an independent report on the CO2 burden as a result of having 12 plenary sessions per year in Strasbourg.

The six body scanners which Parliament bought in 2005 following a security-risk analysis and a recommendation by an outside consultant should now be sold if possible and in future Members should be involved in the decision-making on such purchases.

Other discharges

The Council and the Police College apart, the European Parliament granted discharges to all other institutions and agencies of the EU.