The Committee on Budgetary Control adopted the report
by Petri SARVAMAA (EPP, FI) in which it recommended the European
Parliament to postpones its decision on granting the
Administrative Manager of the Body of European Regulators for
Electronic Communications discharge in respect of the
implementation of the Body’s budget for the financial year
2012. In parallel, Members postponed the closure of the Body’s
accounts and made a number of recommendations in addition to those
that appear in the draft resolution on performance, financial
management and control of EU agencies.
- Legality and regularity of
transactions: Members regretted that
the Body’s accounting system has been validated in 2013. They
called on the Body to take steps in order to avoid such situations
in the future and to report on the steps taken by 1 September 2014.
Members regretted that the committed appropriations carried over,
amounting to EUR 61.5 million (10% of the total committed
appropriations carried over), did not correspond to legal
commitments and were thus irregular.
- Budget and financial management: Members noted with concern that budget monitoring
efforts during the financial year 2012 resulted in a budget
implementation rate of 63.4% and that the payment appropriations
execution rate was 66.16%.
- Commitments and carryovers: Members also regretted that 45% of the committed
appropriations carried over from 2011 were cancelled and that
appropriations of EUR 545 000 were not used and had to be
cancelled. They are worried that the level of carry-overs of
committed appropriations to 2013 was high at EUR 611 000. They
believed that this indicates difficulties in the planning and/or
implementation of the Body’s activities.
- Recruitment procedures:
Members regretted that the recruitment procedures examined showed
significant shortcomings affecting transparency, namely that
questions for written tests and interviews were set after the
applications had been examined by the selection board. Improvements
should be made in this area.
- Conflicts of interests:
Members regretted that the Body has provided limited information
regarding conflicts of interests policy. They noted that personal
conflicts of interests declarations are requested from the members
of the Body's Management Committee and the Board of Regulators, as
well as from their staff members. They called on the Body to inform
the discharge authority of whether it plans to review its conflict
of interests arrangements on the basis of the Commission's
Guidelines on the Prevention and Management of Conflict of
Interests in EU Decentralised Agencies.
Members also made a series of observations on
transfers, procurement and recruitment procedures as well as
comments on internal controls.