PURPOSE:
presentation of the Court of Auditors’ report on the activities funded by the
8th, 9th and 10th European Development Funds (EDF).
CONTENT:
pursuant to the provisions of the Treaty on the functioning of the European
Union, the Court of Auditors submits to the European Parliament and Council,
in the framework of the discharge procedure, a statement of assurance as to
the reliability of the accounts and the legality and regularity of the
underlying transactions of each institution, agency and organ of the EU, on
the basis of an independent external audit.
This audit
also includes the financial management of the EDF.
The main
conclusions of the Court are set out in a “statement of assurance” the main
points of which may be summarised as follows:
Statement of assurance:
- Reliability
of the accounts: the Court concludes that
the final annual accounts of the eighth, ninth and tenth EDFs present
fairly, in all material respects, the financial position of the EDFs as
of 31 December 2009. Without qualifying this opinion, the Court draws
attention to an understatement of the amount of guarantees received
in respect of prefinancing and to an overstatement of the amount of
retention guarantees disclosed in the notes to the financial statements.
- Legality
and regularity of the transactions underlying the accounts: in the Court’s opinion the revenue, commitments and payments
underlying the accounts of the eighth, ninth and tenth European
Development Funds for the year ended 31 December 2009, in all material
respects are legal and regular. However, the Court draws attention to
the high frequency of non-quantifiable errors affecting commitments and
payments albeit not included in the estimation of total error. With
regard to commitments, the errors detected concerned compliance with
tendering rules, legal deadlines for the signature of contracts and
provisions regarding mandatory guarantees. With regard to payments,
the Court’s audit of payments did not find material error. The main types
of quantifiable errors detected on project payments were the following:
(a) accuracy: calculation errors; (b) occurrence: absence of invoices or
other supporting documents for services rendered or goods supplied; (c)
eligibility: expenditure incurred outside the implementation period or
related to items not foreseen in the contract, undue payment of VAT or
non-application of mandatory penalties.
- Control
systems: the Court assessed overall that
EuropeAid’s supervisory and control systems as partially effective when
it comes to preventing, detecting and correcting errors.
The Court’s
recommendations: the Court of Auditors makes a
number of recommendations in order to improve EuropeAid’s supervisory and
control systems. In the context of its planned review of its overall control
strategy, EuropeAid should:
- develop a
key indicator for the estimated financial impact of residual errors
after all ex- ante and ex-post controls have been implemented;
- assess
the cost-effectiveness of the various controls,
- finalise
and disseminate the financial management toolkit targeting the high
inherent risk of errors at the level of implementing organisations,
contractors and beneficiaries to ensure adequate knowledge of financial
management and eligibility rules;
- continue
its efforts to ensure that the Delegations record data in a
comprehensive and timely manner. .
The Court also
makes some technical recommendations with regard to implementation of budget
support.
The report
also includes the figures establishing the amounts regarding the financial
implementation of the EDF in 2009. In particular, it confirms the
following figures:
- total
commitments: EUR 3.406 billion;
- individual
legal commitments: EUR 4.14 billion;
- payments:
EUR 3.069 billion;
- outstanding
payments: EUR 12.49 billion.