Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2002-10-22-Speech-2-290"
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"en.20021022.12.2-290"2
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".
Mr President, Mr van Hulten, honourable Members, I would like to start by again thanking Parliament for its intensive and efficient cooperation on the recast financial regulation for the European Budget. It was only the degree to which all the institutions were committed to working together that made it possible for the new financial regulation to be adopted unanimously by the Council on 25 June 2002. The new financial regulation forms a fundamental part of the reform of the Commission, and I am proud of our having achieved this feat of strength in 2002. I would like to re-emphasise my most especial thanks to Mr van Hulten and Mr Dell'Alba, the latter of whom is not here, but I would like to take this opportunity to mention him again.
Let me conclude with another clarification relating to the final amendment in the report. This reads: 'The accounts for the 2002 financial year shall be drawn up and presented in accordance with the provisions of the Financial Regulation of 1977, except for the obligation to submit these to the Financial Controller.' I will point out now that it was made clear in the new financial regulation that there will be a transitional period up to the 2005 financial year for the clearance of accounts, meaning that, until 2005, the clearance of accounts shall follow the procedure laid down in the financial regulation as at present valid. In view of the fact that the only Member States so far to have largely gone over to accrual accounting – a system of accounting of a rather more Anglo-American stamp – is Great Britain, where it took over seven years to introduce it, the timetable for the Commission continues to be ambitious in the extreme.
I repeat my offer to inform the Committee on Budgetary Control as soon as possible concerning the proposals that the Commission has made here.
One of our main concerns in the recasting of the financial regulation was that it should be simplified by incorporating the very detailed provisions in the rules for implementation, which are to be adopted even before the end of the year in order that they may enter into force on 1 January 2003, that is, at the same time as the new financial regulation. Together with the Committee on Budgetary Control, Mr van Hulten has done very thorough work, for which I thank you most warmly.
Speaking on behalf of the Commission, I have the following to say concerning the individual amendments. Firstly, many of the report's amendments are aimed at incorporating all the reports and items of information to be transmitted to the budgetary authority in an annex summarising the annual activity reports of the authorising officers whose offices administer resources. The Commission favours such a tightening-up of the procedures.
It is proposed in the report, with reference to the summary of the annual activity reports of the authorising authorities, that the requirement that such a summary should be submitted to the discharge authority should apply not only to the Commission, but also to the other institutions. The aim underlying this is one that I share, but the wording of the financial regulation does not permit us to impose such an obligation on other institutions, which in our view would have to agree to it.
Secondly, amendments are proposed in the report relating to the financial actors named in the financial regulation, and these amendments have two aims in view: a) that the budgetary authority be informed when the authorising authorities – at A1 level – and the accounting officer change, and b) that the posts of accounting officer and internal auditor be advertised externally. It therefore follows that the budgetary authority will be informed of new appointments. We are unable, however, to go along with the report's proposal, and, moreover, immediate external advertising would be contrary to the Statute, which expressly provides for posts to be, in the first instance, trawled within the institutions, before they can be advertised externally. This means that immediate external advertising would not be compatible with the Statute.
Thirdly, as regards the amendments on the panel on financial irregularities, we can agree to the proposal that one of the panel's members should be an independent expert. However, we see the mandatory investigation of irregularities even in unimportant cases as going too far.
Fourthly, as regards the directive on late payment, I note Parliament's reminder that the deadline for implementation has expired and that the institutions must, or at any rate should, abide by the rules on interest rates and deadlines applicable to late payment.
Fifthly, I am, in addition, able to agree to several amendments on accounting practice. In particular, the Commission agrees to the clarification regarding the introduction of an integrated data processing system, which is entirely in line with its own earlier proposals. As regards the demand for the drawing up of a list of all persons with the right of access to the electronic accounting system and the creation of an audit trail clearly showing what changes have been made to the system and by whom, I am able to inform you that the Commission is already in possession of both of these. We welcome the incorporation of this provision into the rules for implementation, although I am at the moment unable to give you any information as to whether these conditions are already being complied with by the accounting systems of institutions other than the Commission.
My sixth point is that, in Amendment No 17, you demand that the budgetary authority should be informed of all waivers of recovery of debt in excess of EUR 100 000. The Commission will take this on board as well."@en1
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