Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2011-11-15-Speech-2-626-000"
| Predicate | Value (sorted: default) |
|---|---|
| rdf:type | |
| dcterms:Date | |
| dcterms:Is Part Of | |
| lpv:document identification number |
"en.20111115.33.2-626-000"2
|
| lpv:hasSubsequent | |
| lpv:speaker | |
| lpv:translated text |
"Madam President, I am honoured to be present here today before this Parliament to participate in this debate on the presentation of the European Court of Auditors’ annual report on the implementation of the 2010 European Union budget, which I already presented last week to the Committee on Budgetary Control of this Parliament.
The Commission provides its own assessments of the capacity of internal control systems to ensure the regularity of spending in the annual activity reports of the Directorates-General and in its Synthesis report. In those reports, the Commission includes a number of reservations highlighting areas of risk. However, the Court finds that the scope and scale of those reservations made for the 2010 financial year should have been greater in several areas, including in cohesion, where the Court considers that the Commission’s approach may lead to an underestimation of the amounts at risk.
The annual activity reports of the Directorates-General also provide a self-assessment of performance, including the results achieved from European Union spending. This year, for the first time, the Court presents the results of its review of the performance reporting on three Directorates-General responsible for much EU spending.
The Court recommends that the Commission puts more focus on performance in Annual Activity Reports, including on economy and efficiency, and that it sets appropriate targets for assessing progress towards achieving multiannual objectives. In addition, the Court makes recommendations in areas of shared management for improving the definition of objectives and indicators and the monitoring of progress and results based on the main performance audit results in the Court’s Special Reports.
That completes my summary of the main points in the annual report for the 2010 financial year. I believe this year’s annual report confirms the main message of previous years. After many years of incremental improvements in systems, there remain significant risks to the regularity of payments and scope for improving the results obtained from European Union spending. The proposals for sectoral legislation governing spending after 2013 provide an opportunity to address those risks by reforming legislative frameworks and redesigning control systems. Reforms should focus on improving both regularity of the performance while also reducing the costs of control and ensuring adequate accountability. In addition, there have been a number of significant developments in European Union economic governance that risk giving rise to gaps in public accountability and public audit.
Last month, the Heads of the European Union Supreme Audit Institutions and the European Court of Auditors expressed their concerns on this matter and they called for the principles of transparency, accountability and public audit to be respected when public funds are at stake. The establishment of the European Stability Mechanism was identified as an opportunity to apply these principles.
Promoting transparency and accountability is a responsibility shared by all institutions. It is crucial now, when the pressure on public finances is high, the importance of the European Union meeting its objectives is great, and the need to build citizens’ trust in the European Union and its institutions is acute. I trust that the annual report I have had the honour to present to you today will provide the European Parliament with a sound basis for playing its role in ensuring accountability in respect of the European Union funds for the 2010 financial year.
As in previous years, the Court’s annual report mainly covers the reliability of the 2010 European Union accounts and the regularity of transactions underlying them. This year, it also includes a chapter on the results of the European Union’s spending.
As regards the reliability of the European Union accounts, the Court concludes that the 2010 accounts present fairly the financial position of the European Union and the results of its operations and cash flows at the year end. Nevertheless, there remains scope to improve the quality of financial reporting and the underlying information systems – not least with respect to financial engineering instruments in relation to which the Court considers that the Commission must revisit the relevant accounting rule and take further action to ensure that the necessary information is available from Member States to improve the Commission’s supervision of those financial instruments.
As regards regularity of revenue and expenditure, revenue and commitments underlying the accounts for the year ending 31 December 2010 are legal and regular in all material respects. In contrast, the payments underlying the accounts were affected by material error, with an estimated error rate of 3.7% for the European Union spending as a whole. It should be noted that this is not an estimate of fraud, as there are many reasons why errors may occur. Overall, control systems were found to be only partially effective in ensuring the regularity of payments.
Cohesion, energy and transport was the most error prone group of policy areas of European Union spending. After falling in previous years, the estimated error rate in 2010 was higher than in 2009, leading to an increase in the estimated error rate for payments as a whole compared to 2009.
A relatively small number of wholly ineligible projects and serious breaches of European Union and national procurement rules accounted for much of the error found. There continues to be room for improving Member States’ correction mechanisms and audit activities, not least because some of the errors found could have been detected or corrected by Member States on the basis of available information before payments were made.
For the other groups of policy areas, the audit results were relatively stable. For agriculture and natural resources, the estimated error rate was 2.3%, slightly above the materiality threshold and systems were partially effective. Direct payments covered by the Integrated Administrative Control System, which accounted for almost EUR 40 billion of the EUR 57 billion spent, were found to be free from material error, but spending on rural development remains prone to error.
For research and other internal policies and external aid, development and enlargement, the Court concluded that payments were not materially affected by error, although systems remained only partially effective and there was a significant risk of error for interim and final payments.
Finally, for administrative and other expenditure, the Court concluded that it was not affected by material error and that systems were effective as in previous years."@en1
|
| lpv:unclassifiedMetadata | |
| lpv:videoURI |
Named graphs describing this resource:
The resource appears as object in 2 triples