Europees Parlement bevriest het budget van de Europese Politie-academie (en)

MEPs on Thursday refused to sign off the budget of the European Police College i (CEPOL) for the financial year 2008. Parliament has so far granted budget discharges to all other EU i agencies but finds it unacceptable that the Police College, established as an agency in 2006, has yet to meet good standards of administration.

MEPs stress that repeated audits have highlighted shortcomings in the College's observance of the Financial and Staff Regulations, its accounting system, its management of budgets and staff, its procurement procedures and its rules governing expenditure on courses.

During its vote on Tuesday this week on next year's EU budget, Parliament's Budget Committee decided to freeze a sum of €425,000 for the Police College until it receives satisfactory information on the follow-up to be given to the negative discharge decision.

Today's vote follows Parliament's decision in May 2010 to postpone the CEPOL discharge because of structural internal management deficiencies. At that time Parliament requested an action plan and a list of specific remedial measures with an implementation timetable.

"CEPOL's governing board did come up with the action plan but we did not receive the specific measures and their timetable for implementation", said rapporteur Veronique Mathieu (EPP, FR), adding that "we asked for an implementation plan that was adopted by the governing board and had been subject to a professional assessment. None of these requests were met."

Following today's decision to refuse the discharge, a formal proposal to close the accounts for the year 2008 will be submitted to a vote at the October II session.