The Committee
on Budgetary Control adopted the report by Georgios STAVRAKAKIS (S&D, EL)
calling on the European Parliament to grant the Executive Director of the
European Environment Agency discharge in respect of the implementation of its
budget for the financial year 2009.
Noting that
the Agency’s annual accounts for the financial year 2009 are reliable, and
the underlying transactions are legal and regular, MEPs approve the closure
of the Agency’s accounts. However, they make a number of recommendations that
need to be taken into account when the discharge is granted, in addition to
the general recommendations that appear in the draft resolution on financial
management and control of EU agencies (see DEC/2010/2271):
- performance: Members call on the Agency to set out, in a table to be
annexed to the Court of Auditors’ next report, a comparison of
operations carried out during the year for which discharge is to be
granted and in the previous financial year, so as to enable the discharge
authority to assess the Agency's performance from one year to the next
more effectively. Members encourage the Agency to continue its efforts
to further develop its communication methods in order to attract more
media coverage for its findings and thus feed public debate on important
environmental issues, such as climate change, biodiversity and the
management of natural resources. They also consider that such measures
may lead to a more transparent working method and greater public
interest in the Agency’s work;
- budgetary
procedures: Members acknowledge that the
Court of Auditors reported insufficiently rigorous procedures for
drawing up the budget leading to a considerable number of budgetary
transfers affecting most of the budget lines (equivalent to 8 % of the
Agency's budget). They are concerned about the Agency's practice of
making transfers to increase a budget line in order to pay the rent for
the Agency’s premises for the first quarter of 2010 and charge it to the
2009 budget. They stress that this practice by the Agency is at odds
with the principle of annuality. They call on the Agency to improve, by
the end of the year, the accuracy of the information provided by the
operational departments on the estimation of accrued operational
expenditure;
- human resources:Members
call on the Agency to redress its deficiencies in the recruitment
procedures. They note, in particular, that vacancy notices did not
specify a number of crucial aspects and call on the Agency to enhance
the transparency of its procedures in this regard;
- internal
audit: Members note that the Agency has
still not followed up on certain recommendations from the Internal Audit
Service (IAS) in spite of the fact that they were considered “very
important”.