The Committee
on Budgetary Control adopted the report by Georgios STAVRAKAKIS (S&D, EL)
on discharge to be granted to the Director of the European Training
Foundation for implementation of the Foundation's
budget for the financial year 2009.
Noting that
the Foundation’s annual accounts for the financial year 2009 are reliable,
and the underlying transactions are legal and regular, MEPs approve the
closure of the Foundation’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 welcome the Foundation's intention to improve the
performance of Vocational Education and Training (VET) systems in the
Foundation partner countries ("Torino Process") and to develop
a common methodology with International Organisations and Bilateral
Donors to improve its role. They call again on
the Foundation to set out a comparison of the operations that were
carried out during the year for which discharge is to be granted and
during the previous financial year so as to enable the discharge
authority to assess its performance more effectively from one year to
the next;
- cooperation
with CEDEFOP: Members note that, each year,
the Foundation and CEDEFOP draft a joint work programme and welcome the
Foundation’s intention to devote further space to reporting on the
implementation of this joint work programme in future Annual Activity
Reports;
- budgetary
management: Members urge the Foundation to
draw up budgetary procedures more rigorously in order to avoid the
considerable number of budgetary transfers. They also call on it to
obtain the authorisation of its Governing Board when transfers are
required (because this is required by the Foundation's Financial
Regulation). They also call on the Foundation to closely follow the
provisions of the basic regulation, especially where financial transfers
between titles are concerned. They take the view, however, that
activity-based budgeting is difficult in a system that separates staff and
administrative expenditure from operational expenditure, especially for
an agency of which the main activities are providing policy analyses,
disseminating and exchanging information and experience and supporting
partner-country capacity building;
- human
resources: Members welcome the Foundation's
initiative of undertaking a thorough review of its recruitment
procedures in response to the findings of the Internal Audit Service
(IAS) and to the recommendations made by the Parliament;
- internal
audit: Members welcome the initiative of
providing the discharge authority with the IAS Annual Internal Audit
Report concerning the Foundation. They call on the Foundation to
implement the IAS recommendations rapidly, particularly those regarding
the Director’s Declaration of Assurance, the internal control system, on
a better description of risk management, the introduction of ex-post
controls on financial transactions and on the definition of target
values for corporate indicators.