Having
examined the revenue and expenditure account for the financial year 2005, the
balance sheet of revenue and expenditure at 31 December 2005 of the European
Centre for the Development of Vocational Training, the Council recommends the
European Parliament to give a discharge to the Director of the Centre in
respect of the implementation of the budget for the financial year 2005.
In doing so,
the Council confirms that EUR 1.1 million (88%) of the EUR 1.3 million in
appropriations carried forward from the financial year 2004 to the financial
year 2005 have been used. In addition, EUR 1.0 million in appropriations have
been carried forward from the financial year 2005 to the financial year 2006
and EUR 1.9 million have been cancelled.
In parallel,
the Council makes accompanying comments on the discharge which should be
followed up. In particular, it:
- notes that
the Court has been able to issue a statement of reasonable assurance
on the reliability of the Centre's annual accounts for the financial
year ended 31 December 2005. However, it regrets that in respect of the
reasonable assurance as to the legality and regularity of the underlying
transactions, taken as a whole, the Court has excluded the transactions
concerning the organisation and award procedures of contracts;
- notes the
efforts undertaken by the Centre to improve its management, the
Council would like to draw attention to the issues mentioned below;
- regrets that
the Centre did not fully respect the competition rules and failed to
justify or document the chosen procedures. The Council stresses the fact
that this is detrimental to sound management and budgetary discipline.
However, the Council takes note of the measures taken by the Centre
during the last quarter of 2005 to remedy the shortcomings identified by
the Court and it calls strongly on the Centre to continue its efforts to
ensure that the contracts award procedures are strictly applied;
- highlights
that concerning budgetary management, it regrets the
under-implementation of the appropriations for operating activities and
invites the Centre to improve the programming of its work and to ensure
a rigorous monitoring of it, in particular by adopting an activity
based-management system as soon as possible;
- underlines
the importance of applying the principle of separation of the duties of
authorising officer and accounting officer and takes notes of the steps
taken by the Centre to correct the weaknesses pointed out by the Court.
It calls on the Centre to follow the Court's remarks concerning the need
to carry out a risk analysis, to define the nature and frequency of ex
post checks and to provide a description of the management procedures
and internal control systems;
- it notes
with concern that, once again, the Centre did not fully respect the recruitment
procedure, at the expense of transparency and the quality of the
selection. In this respect, the Council recalls the recommendations made
in the previous year and expects the Centre to take all the necessary
steps to tighten up its recruitment procedures without any further
delay;
- expresses
its concern regarding the shortcomings of the accounting software
and calls on the Centre to replace it as soon as possible with the new
system proposed by the Commission, with the full support and help of the
latter.