Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-12-04-Speech-4-006"
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"en.20031204.1.4-006"2
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Mr President, Mr President of the Court of Auditors, Members of the Court of Auditors, ladies and gentlemen, the Court has been unstinting in its support for the Commission’s reforms, and acknowledges in its report for 2002 that these have made good progress. Not only for that, but also for the depth and breadth of their work, as also for their unambiguous recommendations for specific further action, many thanks are owed to all the members of the Court of Auditors.
We are learning our lessons from the Eurostat experience, primarily, of course, within Eurostat itself, but also as regards OLAF and the relationship between the Directorates-General and the political level. What happened within Eurostat in the years leading up to 1999 is not evidence of the reform’s failure – on the contrary, it is evidence of how necessary the reform was and of the fact that the steps we took were the right ones. Where the existence of loopholes has become apparent, we are closing them.
Let me again stress how far-reaching these reforms are. What they in fact do is introduce, at last, into every area of the management of this international authority, uniform rules and uniform standards. That amounts to a cultural revolution, in that the various cultures were previously bound by very diverse rules, most of which were not written down. In future, if I may quote Mr Fabra Vallés there will be no more ‘principalities’, but, instead, one administration, which must – and will – in every sphere, comply with demanding standards and be held to account for the way in which they do so. The presentation of the Court’s annual report marks the start of the budget discharge procedure. The Commission looks forward to good cooperation with the rapporteur, Mr Bayona de Perogordo, and with the Committee on Budgetary Control as a whole.
Any public budget largely devoted to the granting of subsidies, and that in what are now 15 Member States and will shortly be 25, will always have to defend its financial interests tooth and nail. The Commission has committed itself to the objective of doing so; far from being discouraged by setbacks, we will redouble our efforts, and the Court of Auditors gives us fresh courage as we pursue this goal.
As regards the Budget, there is no doubt that the highlights of 2002 were the recasting of the Financial Regulation and the conclusion of the financial negotiations with the candidate countries, whereby enlargement was put on a sound financial footing. These two things had been targets that I had set for myself personally and for the Commission. It is because we are on the very threshold of enlargement that I am very glad that the Court of Auditors was able to state, in its annual report for 2002, that no mistakes of any significance had been made in the handling of pre-accession aid. The effort made not only by the candidate countries but also by all the European institutions to support more widespread and functioning financial controls in the enlargement states are bearing fruit. This is made all the more important by the fact that the implementation of pre-accession aid is at last gathering pace, and, from next year onwards, all ten states will participate in all the aid programmes funded from the European Budget.
The Court of Auditors has the function of checking the books of the European Union – that is to say, of examining the way it keeps its accounts. It is our accountant. It has again given a favourable opinion of the correctness of the books: the accounts of the European Union truthfully reflect the receipts and outgoings in 2002, and the balance sheet presents a faithful picture of the European Union’s assets at year end.
I might add that the outgoings for 2002 amount to EUR 85 billion, rather than the EUR 100 billion that is always quoted in the media, and not only for a Budget Commissioner is the difference between EUR 100 billion and EUR 85 billion something more than marginal. The Court of Auditors’ comments on the balance sheet for 2002 also show that the European Union’s entitlements and obligations are not set in stone, but vary according to the tasks – and the example I would give is our share in Galileo, which represents a challenge not only to technology, but also in terms of auditing and of the balance sheet. The Court of Auditors also issues a positive Statement of Assurance in respect of the receipts, examining both the levying of customs duties
and the computation of the European Union’s VAT receipts and of the national contributions based on gross national income, which – the various deceptive rumours in connection with the Eurostat affair notwithstanding – is declared by the Member States rather than by Eurostat.
Although the Court attests the reliability of the commitment appropriations and of the administrative expenditure, it does not do this in respect of the other items of expenditure. This clearly shows where new priorities in improving financial management both at Commission level and in the Member States are to be found. I emphasise that the Court acknowledges the Commission’s tighter controls and stresses the problems involved in joint management, which applies to 80% of the expenditure.
The agricultural budget required the Court to audit 64 paying agencies, in the course of which it discovered three where errors cropped up so frequently that they could not be certified as reliable. One of them was in Portugal and the other two are in Germany, one being in Baden-Württemberg and the other in Bavaria. The Court again had criticisms to make of the Structural Funds, in that, whilst the funds are not expected to be used to their fullest extent, the surplus is not to be repaid to the Member States next year, but in a supplementary budget in the current year. This year, we have taken on board this criticism and submitted a supplementary budget totalling EUR 5 billion, and this House will probably adopt it on 18 December.
The fact that there are discussions every year about how the EU’s finances are managed might give the impression that no progress is being made. It is the Court of Auditors, though, that stresses the fundamental and comprehensive nature of the Commission’s financial reforms, which is precisely what the Court had asked for. At the heart of them is the adaptation of financial management to the realities of a budget that will, over the coming year, come close to reaching the EUR 100 billion mark and will comprise over a million payment transactions every year, spread over 35 Directorates-General and 15 – soon to be 25 – Member States, and administered by international and non-governmental organisations. Responsibility for the ex-ante control of financial transactions has been transferred to the operational departments, and any attempt to reverse this – even the demand that ex-ante checks be carried out by the accounting officer – takes no account of what modern public-sector financial management requires. Checks are no less thorough since the end of centralised budget control, which was in any case only capable of carrying out limited spot checks. In every one of the directorates-general, the new financial circuits, which must involve trained financial experts in every service and ex-post controls by the auditors, all reinforced by the addition of human resources in this area and by a hitherto unseen level of expenditure on initial and in-service training in auditing, make it possible for every Director-General to give the Commission a regular account of how the finances are managed. If one also takes into account the audits by the internal audit service, the regular evaluation of the examination of the control systems by the Central Financial Service, the investigations by OLAF and, of course, the ever wider-ranging audits by the Commission’s external auditors, then it becomes apparent that an extensive structure is in place for monitoring the European budget, to which one must add the checks carried out in the Member States in respect of 80% of the Budget.
According to the Member States, 16 000 persons are employed in auditing the agricultural funds and 6 700 on the Structural Funds. I agree with the Court of Auditors that this is where there needs to be greater convergence if these controls are to be made efficient. Controls require rules, for which the conditions were created when the new and fully recast Financial Regulation entered into force on 1 January. What lies behind this is shown by the example of the financial support given to institutions, which, although a central instrument of Community expenditure, were subject to no rules whatever prior to the Commission’s first Vademecum in 1999. There are now detailed and binding rules for them in the new Financial Regulation and in secondary legislation, and the new legal acts required for these grants will shortly be adopted by this House.
In addition, the reforms do, of course, constitute a process in which the Commission is constantly learning by practical experience and from what the Court of Auditors and Parliament recommend. So it is that further substantial improvements have been made to the procedure for drawing up the reports of the Directors-General, in particular for the sake of improved comparability. The President of the Court of Auditors has just mentioned the implementation of the internal audit standards, which he quite rightly described as being central and crucial elements in reform, with which we are again currently pressing ahead with some vigour, especially as regards the rotation of officials in sensitive positions, and, where this has not yet been done, precise deadlines have been laid down for it."@en1
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