The European Parliament adopted by 537
votes to 81, with 32 abstentions a decision on discharge to be granted to the Director of the European Foundation for Living and
Working Conditions (Eurofound) 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, Parliament approves the closure of the
Foundation’s accounts. However, it makes 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 resolution on financial
management and control of EU agencies - see DEC/2010/2271):
- performance: Parliament notes that the Foundation carried out another
ex-post assessment exercise of its 2005-2008 work programme which showed
that it had deployed its financial resources efficiently and achieved
the objectives of its work programme. It encourages it to further
develop its performance monitoring system and to ensure that the results
are fed back into management decision-making and planning. It calls on
Eurofound to better define its target audiences at a national level (and
to try and reach a broader range of employer and employee bodies and to set
up a network of focal points);
- governing board: Parliament calls on the Foundation to take steps to
strengthen the Governing Board's role in providing overall direction to
Eurofound;
- procurement procedures: Parliament notes the presence of errors and anomalies in the
evaluation of one open procurement procedure which affected its quality.
Steps need to be taken to improve Eurofound’s evaluation and review
procedure to avoid repetition of such errors in the future;
- budgetary management: Parliament calls on the Foundation to make sure that
appropriations are made available only when the corresponding assigned
revenue has been received. It regrets that the Court of Auditors was
compelled to comment on the budgetary and financial statement of the
Foundation, especially to the effect that the initial provisional
accounts presented by the Foundation contained serious shortcomings;
- human resources: lastly, Parliament calls on the Foundation to provide
evidence of its staff selection decisions in order to guarantee the
transparency of the recruitment procedures. In fact, the Court of
Auditors reported irregularities in this respect for seven audited staff
selection procedures. Parliament calls for the rectification of all the
shortcomings identified by the Court since 2006 in respect of Eurofound’s
recruitment procedures.