2006 discharge: EC general budget, European Ombudsman

PURPOSE: to present the report of the Court of Auditors on the implementation of the budget concerning the financial year 2006 (other institutions – European Ombudsman).

CONTENT: in its annual report for the financial year 2006, the Court evaluates the legality and regularity of operational expenditure of the institutions. While, on the whole, all the institutions have put in place a satisfactory monitoring and control framework, the Court notes a certain number of weaknesses in terms of compliance with procurement procedures by the institutions (particularly a lack of competition between tenderers in the case of negotiated procedures).

For the rest, the Court notes that the incidence of error on expenditure samples selected by the Court for scrutiny was not significant. However, the Court expects the highlighted weaknesses to be addressed in the future.

Audit of the European Ombudsman: the audit of areas showing specific risk indicated that shortcomings affected the monitoring and control systems for the payment of allowances to members of certain institutions. However, the audit of the European Ombudsman did not lead to any significant observations.