The European Parliament adopted a decision to grant the Director of the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control discharge in respect of the implementation of the Centre's budget for the financial year 2010. This decision also approves the closure of the Agency’s accounts.
Noting that the Court of Auditors stated that it has obtained reasonable assurances that the annual accounts of the Centre for the financial year 2010 are reliable and that the underlying transactions are legal and regular, Parliament adopted a resolution containing a series of recommendations that need to be taken into account when the discharge is granted, in addition to the general recommendations that appear in the draft resolution on performance, financial management and control of EU agencies.
These recommendations may be summarised as follows:
- Financial Management: Parliament acknowledges from the final annual accounts of the Centre for the financial year 2010 that its budget execution rate reached 95% in terms of commitment appropriations. It is however concerned that the budget execution rate in terms of payments only reached 68 % of its total budget. Further efforts need to be made by the Centre in this respect. Members underline that the implementation of payment credits improved to 92.7% which represents an amount of unused credits of EUR 3.8 million and that this under-execution is related to the fact that the Centre has limited its request of payment credits in order to reduce the amount of cash in its bank account at year end;
- Carryover appropriations: Parliament states that an amount of EUR 15.6 million, equivalent to 27% of the total budget was carried forward to 2011. It urges once more the Centre to promptly redress the deficiencies found by the Court of Auditors on carryovers and stress that a high level of carryovers has a negative impact on the implementation of the budget;
- Procurement: Parliament observes from its AAR that the procurement office dealt with 50 open procedures and 18 negotiated procedures as well as 8 calls for proposals. It calls on the Centre to provide the discharge authority with the results of each of the procurement procedures;
- Human Resources: Parliament urges the Centre to put in place sufficient measures to guarantee the transparency of its recruitment procedures. It is concerned about the Court of Auditors’ findings: neither the thresholds that candidates had to meet in order to be invited to the interview, nor those necessary to be put on the reserve list were fixed in advance. This could cover up a situation of nepotism or conflict of interests. Members ascertain that the turnover rate for temporary agents and contract agents was 7% in 2010;
- Performance: Parliament acknowledges that the Centre is now working with its partners to implement changes on the basis of lessons learned from the 2009 H1N1 pandemic, in order to further improve the performance of the Centre for the future;
- Internal audit: Members note that according to the report on budgetary and financial management, a review of the implementation of the Internal Control System was carried out. They urge the Centre to promptly take action in this respect and inform the discharge authority of the stage of implementation of these standards. Members acknowledge also from the Centre that at the end of 2010 the IAS audit reported no critical findings.