President Europese Rekenkamer geeft uitleg in Europees Parlement over uitgaven EU (en)

Met dank overgenomen van Europese Rekenkamer i, gepubliceerd op donderdag 10 mei 2012.

European Parliament Plenary Session, 10 May 2012

Discharge of 2010 EU budget

Check against delivery. The spoken version shall take precedence.

President,

Honourable Members of the European Parliament,

It is an honour to be the first President of the Court of Auditors i to be invited to address the European Parliament at this stage in the discharge procedure.

The discharge procedure is essential for EU public accountability. It helps provide assurance to citizens about:

  • • 
    what EU funds were spent on;
  • • 
    whether they were used correctly; and
  • • 
    what was achieved with them.

The Court’s role is to provide independent assessments of the quality of their financial management and reporting.

For financial year 2010, the Court concluded that the EU accounts prepared by the Commission do provide a reliable picture of what EU funds were spent on.

We noted, however, that the Commission does not yet provide complete and reliable information on whether EU funds have been correctly raised and spent.

On the basis of our own audit testing, the Court concluded that revenue and commitments underlying the EU accounts were legal and regular in all material respects.

In contrast, the payments underlying these accounts were affected by material error, with an estimated error rate of 3.7 % for the EU budget as a whole.

As in previous years, the most error prone area was Cohesion, Energy and Transport.

We also concluded that systems were only partially effective overall and there continue to be risks in the other areas of expenditure which need to be managed and disclosed.

The Court recommended that due account should be taken of these risks when revising the legislative instruments and control frameworks governing the 2014 to 2020 programming period. In particular, the Court stressed that reforms should focus on both reducing errors and improving the results achieved.

It is also important to ensure adequate provision for transparency. The Commission’s reporting on results achieved needs to be improved. In particular, we emphasised the need to set SMART objectives and milestones for the new programming period. This is a point we also made in our recent opinions on the new legislative proposals governing the main areas of expenditure for the period 2014 to 2020.

In the discharge decision on the 2009 financial year, this Parliament invited the Court to present an opinion on the evaluation report required by the Lisbon Treaty and I am pleased to announce that we will issue our opinion shortly.

The Court believes that this first evaluation report represents an initial step in the right direction and provides the Parliament, the Council and the Commission with an opportunity to discuss and agree how it can be made useful to the Discharge Authority as an instrument of EU transparency and accountability.

President and honourable members,

The Court believes that an effective discharge procedure is essential for EU accountability and we are fully committed to working with the European Parliament and other partners in the procedure to achieve that goal each year.

Thank you for your kind attention.

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