Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2010-04-21-Speech-3-018"
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"en.20100421.3.3-018"2
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"Mr President, Mr Šemeta, it has to be said that in all the institutions with which I have been involved – the Court of Justice, the Court of Auditors, which is absent today, the Economic and Social Committee, the Committee of the Regions, the European Ombudsman and the European Data Protection Supervisor – there has generally been a significant improvement, but this does not mean that everything is ideal.
Let us say frankly that the situation is least transparent with the finances of the Council. Moreover, cooperation with the Council on the matter of budget discharge leaves a great deal to be desired. The Committee on Budgetary Control has endorsed my proposal to postpone a decision on granting the Council’s Secretary-General discharge in respect of the implementation of its budget for the financial year 2008. The situation is analogous to the one from last year. The Coordinators of the Committee on Budgetary Control met the representatives of the Spanish Presidency’s Council assuming a positive view should be taken of the progress on cooperation which was made last year and which resulted from the protracted discharge procedure. This year, unfortunately, the answers given to the questions put by myself and the coordinators were completely unsatisfactory and gave rise to a great many doubts. For this reason, and with the support of the coordinators of all the political groups, I have decided to postpone the decision on discharge. Matters relating to the financing of various aspects of common foreign policy and security, annual financial reports and the closing of extra-budgetary accounts still remain unclear. A definite improvement must be made on the matters of verification of invoices and publication of administrative decisions used as the legal basis for budgetary items. In addition, it is paradoxical that much of the data presented by the Council concerned the former budgetary period.
As for the Court of Justice, we can discern certain weaknesses in internal tender procurement procedures, as can the Court of Auditors. In relation to this, we support the suggestion of the Court of Auditors concerning the need to improve tender procedures in this institution. We are pleased about the reduction in the duration of proceedings but, on the other hand, we have observed a persistent backlog of cases. We are pleased to note the opening of the Internal Audit Unit. We welcome the practice of including in the activity report information on progress made in relation to the discharge of the year before. I stress very strongly that we regret the permanent reluctance of the ECJ to publish its members’ declarations of financial interests.
As for the Court of Auditors, the external audit did not give grounds to state that the financial resources assigned to the Court are being used improperly. I repeat the suggestion to consider the possibility of rationalising the structure of the Court, for example, by capping the number of members and not treating the Court of Auditors as a specific kind of political group.
In the case of the Economic and Social Committee, the audit conducted by the Court of Auditors did not reveal any serious improprieties. It should be recommended that provisions concerning financial aspects of staff be interpreted and implemented by all EU institutions in the same way, so that the staff of none of the institutions are treated in a more privileged way. It is very good that the Administrative Cooperation Agreement between the Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of the Regions has been adopted. We encourage both institutions to communicate the progress made as regards harmonising their internal control standards.
We do not have any serious reservations concerning the Committee of the Regions or the European Ombudsman. We note that the European Ombudsman has greatly increased its number of posts. The question is whether it should increase the number of posts at this pace, although it does also have more work.
To sum up, there is only a problem with the Council. There are no problems with the other six institutions."@en1
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