PURPOSE: presentation by the Commission of the consolidated annual accounts of the European Union for the financial year 2016, as part of the 2016 discharge procedure.
Analysis of the accounts of the European Asylum Support Office (EASO).
CONTENT: the organisational governance of the EU consists of institutions, agencies and other EU bodies whose expenditure is included in the general budget of the Union.
This Commission document concerns the EU's consolidated accounts for the year 2016 and details how spending by the EU institutions and bodies was carried out. The consolidated annual accounts of the EU provide financial information on the activities of the institutions, agencies and other bodies of the EU from an accrual accounting and budgetary perspective.
It is the responsibility of the Commission's Accounting Officer to prepare the EU's consolidated annual accounts and ensure that they present fairly, in all material aspects, the financial position, the result of the operations and the cash flows of the EU institutions and bodies, including the European Asylum Support Office (EASO), with a view to granting discharge.
Discharge procedure: the final step of a budget lifecycle is the discharge of the budget for a given financial year. It represents the political aspect of the external control of budget implementation and is the decision by which the European Parliament, acting on a Council recommendation, "releases" the Commission (and other EU bodies) from its responsibility for management of a given budget by marking the end of that budget's existence. The European Parliament is the discharge authority within the EU.
The discharge procedure may produce three outcomes: (i) the granting; (ii) postponement or; (iii) the refusal of the discharge.
The final discharge report including specific recommendations to the Commission for action is adopted in plenary by the European Parliament and are subject to an annual follow up report in which the Commission outlines the concrete actions it has taken to implement the recommendations made.
Each agency is subject to its own discharge procedure, including the EASO.
The European Asylum Support Office (EASO): the Office was set up under Regulation 439/2010 of the European Parliament and of the Council. Its main aim is to help to improve the implementation of the Common European Asylum System (the CEAS).
2016 was EASO’s fifth year of operation that witnessed major events having a significant impact on the Agency. The first key event was the signing of the EU-Turkey Statement in March 2016 that gave EASO a mandate to support the implementation of several measures in Greece, in particular the admissibility procedure.
As regards the Office’s accounts, these are presented in detail in the document on the consolidated annual accounts of the European Union for 2016:
Commitment appropriations:
- available: EUR 66 million;
- made: EUR 53 million.
Payment appropriations:
- available: EUR 55 million;
- made: EUR 35 million.
For further details on expenditure, please refer to the final accounts of the EASO.