PURPOSE: to present the report by the Court of Auditors on the 2008 accounts of the European Centre for the Development of Vocational Training (Cedefop).
CONTENT: in the Court’s opinion, the Centre’s Annual Accounts present fairly, in all material respects, its financial position as of 31 December 2008 and the results of its operations and its cash flows for the year then ended. The transactions underlying the annual accounts of the Centre for the financial year ended are, in all material respects, legal and regular.
The Court of Auditors report includes a detailed section on Cedefop’s expenditure as well as an analysis of the expenditure in the accounts and the Centre’s replies.
· The Court’s analysis of the accounts: the Court states that more than EUR 3.5 million was carried forward and that EUR 1.4 million (or 25%) of the payment appropriations were carried forward. This indicated weaknesses in the programming and monitoring of the differentiated appropriations for operating activities. The Court also stated that for each main activity, the Centre’s 2008 work programme lists operational objectives and actions and links them to performance indicators. Often, objectives and indicators were neither clearly result-oriented nor measurable. In order to have a real activity based management allowing a continuous improvement of resource allocation and performance analysis, the Centre should implement a project time recording system for its agents and foster its orientation towards results being achieved.
· The Centre’s reply: the Centre indicates that the carry over of payment appropriations was partly necessary because of unsuccesful procurement procedures to be relaunched end 2008. Several initiatives have been taken to improve the objective setting and to move towards a result oriented performance measurement system, starting already in 2008. In 2009 a comprehensive performance measurement system will be implemented. This is already reflected in the 2009 work programme.