42 Amendments of Laura AGEA related to 2017/2136(DEC)
Amendment 1 #
Proposal for a decision 1
Paragraph 1
Paragraph 1
1. Grants/pPostpones the Commission discharge in respect of the implementation of the general budget of the European Union for the financial year 2016;
Amendment 4 #
Proposal for a decision 2
Paragraph 1
Paragraph 1
1. Grants/pPostpones the Director of the Education, Audiovisual and Culture Executive Agency discharge in respect of the implementation of the Agency’s budget for the financial year 2016;
Amendment 6 #
Proposal for a decision 3
Paragraph 1
Paragraph 1
1. Grants/pPostpones the Director of the Executive Agency for Small and Medium- sized Enterprises discharge in respect of the implementation of the Agency’s budget for the financial year 2016;
Amendment 8 #
Proposal for a decision 4
Paragraph 1
Paragraph 1
1. Grants/pPostpones the Director of the Consumers, Health, Agriculture and Food Executive Agency discharge in respect of the implementation of the Agency’s budget for the financial year 2016;
Amendment 10 #
Proposal for a decision 5
Paragraph 1
Paragraph 1
1. Grants/pPostpones the Director of the European Research Council Executive Agency discharge in respect of the implementation of the Agency’s budget for the financial year 2016;
Amendment 12 #
Proposal for a decision 6
Paragraph 1
Paragraph 1
1. Grants/pPostpones the Director of the Research Executive Agency discharge in relation to the implementation of the Agency’s budget for the financial year 2016;
Amendment 14 #
Proposal for a decision 7
Paragraph 1
Paragraph 1
1. Grants/pPostpones the Director of the Innovation and Networks Executive Agency discharge in respect of the implementation of the Agency’s budget for the financial year 2016;
Amendment 16 #
Proposal for a decision 8
Paragraph 1
Paragraph 1
1. Approves/pPostpones the closure of the accounts of the general budget of the European Union for the financial year 2016;
Amendment 27 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 2
Paragraph 2
2. Calls on the Commission to provide the Parliament with a mid-term evaluation of the current financial period and an evaluation of the past financial periods, includingto identify which programmes have not shown any clear added value and then carry out a spending review;
Amendment 29 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 3
Paragraph 3
3. Reminds that the Commission should take into account in its proposals for a new Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF) that some policy areas, like cohesion or research, often rely on longer- term programming and need more time to achieve political objectives than other policy areas. Nevertheless, suitable flexibility should be given in emergency situations;
Amendment 45 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 8
Paragraph 8
8. Calls on the Commission to improve the transparency of migration policy financing as recommended by the Court in its annual report for 2016 and to actively monitor public procurement procedures when they are held in emergency situations;
Amendment 47 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 9
Paragraph 9
9. Calls on the Commission to improve transparency for trust funds and for the external assistance management reports, regularly providing all data at its disposal;
Amendment 88 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 38 a (new)
Paragraph 38 a (new)
38a. Regrets the divergences in data on the error rate provided by the Court of Auditors and the Commission; calls on the Commission to focus on making reimbursements where there is a higher error rate; highlights that the reduction in the error rate cannot be seen as significant, since around half of the EU budget is still affected by a high error rate;
Amendment 92 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 40
Paragraph 40
40. Points out that the College of the Commissioners does not produce an annual statement on governance, in line with best practice and the common practice of Member States; asks that this practice be made obligatory starting from the beginning of the next College of Commissioners’ term;
Amendment 105 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 46
Paragraph 46
46. Notes with concern that a record level of outstanding commitments has been created, reaching by the end of 2016 an all- time high of EUR 238 billion, 72 % higher than in 2007 and equivalent to 2.9 years of payments compared to 2.2 years in 2007; considers that this has increased the amounts owed by the EU and thus the financial exposure of the Union budget; acknowledges the efforts made in giving the European Parliament access to data on the subject, but calls on the Commission to also provide an overview of solutions for resolving the situation;
Amendment 113 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 48
Paragraph 48
48. Recalls that the Union is making increasing use of financial instruments and regrets that the establishment of EFSI creates new governance arrangements with limited public scrutiny;
Amendment 123 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 51
Paragraph 51
51. Is disappointed that three years after the start of the 2014-2020 period, the Member States have designated only 77 % of the programme authorities responsible for implementing the ESI funds; calls on the Commission to carry out a careful analysis of why some regions still have a low fund absorption rate and to evaluate specific actions aimed at resolving the structural problems at the root of these low rates; asks the Commission to take on-the-spot action to improve absorption capacity in Member States experiencing difficulties in this regard;
Amendment 127 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 53
Paragraph 53
53. Notes that the Commission mobilised various resources to deal with the refugee and migration crisis, but regrets that it did not establish a reporting structure to enable it to report comprehensively on the use of the funds involved; deplores the fact that it is currently impossible to know how much is spent on each migrant/refugee;
Amendment 160 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 78 a (new)
Paragraph 78 a (new)
78a. Regrets the discrepancies in the level of customs checks between the various Member States; highlights the importance of harmonising checks at all points of entry into the Customs Union and calls on the Member States to ensure a coordinated, uniform and efficient implementation of the border system, discouraging diverging practices between Member States to reduce the number of existing loopholes in customs check systems; calls on the Commission, in this respect, to examine different customs check practices in the EU and their impact on the deviation of trade, focusing in particular on EU customs practices at external borders, and to develop reference analyses and information on customs operations and the procedures used in the Member States;
Amendment 162 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 80
Paragraph 80
Amendment 163 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 81
Paragraph 81
Amendment 165 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 85 – point c
Paragraph 85 – point c
Amendment 190 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 116
Paragraph 116
116. Remains convinced that better and more numerous links are needed between economic governance mechanisms and cohesion policyof the need to incentivise internal demand to stimulate sustainable growth through investments with real added value and actions to recover land and protect the environment;
Amendment 199 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 124 a (new)
Paragraph 124 a (new)
124a. Calls on the Commission to duly take into account the remarks of the Court of Auditors, which found inaccuracies in the analysis of the performance of at least four of the 12 ERDF and ESF financial instruments examined in the 2016 European Court of Auditors report; shares the concern of the Court of Auditors, which highlights that these errors have the effect of overstating performance and, if not corrected, could artificially increase the declared amount of eligible expenditure at closure, especially in the case of guarantee funds;
Amendment 200 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 125
Paragraph 125
125. Notes also that 42% of the errors were caused by ineligible casts included in expenditure declarations, 30% relate to serious failure to respect public procurement rules, and 28% relate to ineligible projects, activities or beneficiaries; regrets that up until now the public procurement directive has not demonstrated any real effectiveness in combating the enduring weaknesses found;
Amendment 202 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 125 a (new)
Paragraph 125 a (new)
125a. Notes with regret that one of the main sources of expenditure-related errors under the heading ‘Economic, social and territorial cohesion’ continues to be breaches of the rules on public procurement; points out that serious breaches of the rules on public procurement include the direct award of additional contracts or additional works or services for which no justification is given, the illegal exclusion of bidders, conflicts of interest and discriminatory selection criteria; regards as essential a policy of complete transparency in respect of information concerning contractors and subcontractors, with a view to addressing errors and abuses of the rules;
Amendment 203 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 126
Paragraph 126
126. Welcomes that the Court emphasised that projects using the simplified cost options are less error-prone than reimbursements of actual costs; calls on the Commission to simplify performance measurement by reducing the number of objectives and indicators;
Amendment 221 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 147
Paragraph 147
147. Regrets furthermore that in general only 26,1% of projects were selected, and only 3,7% of the available structural funds absorbed at the end of 2016 and whereas the selection process accelerated in 2017, the slow start may lead to a high number of outstanding commitments at the end of the current financing period; calls on the Commission to guarantee further efforts to strengthen the administrative capacity of national, regional and local authorities;
Amendment 225 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 154
Paragraph 154
154. Notes that the Commission estimated the overall average error rate on 2016 payments for the 2007-2013 ERDF/CF programmes to be in the range of 2.2% to 4.2%, and the residual error rate at closure to be approximately 0.4%; stresses that once again, 'Cohesion' was the biggest contributor to the estimated level of error for 2016, followed by ‘Natural resources’, ‘Competitiveness’ and ‘Global Europe’; calls on the Commission to keep working with Member States to improve their management and control systems and to continue to use available legal supervisory tools to ensure that all material errors are corrected;
Amendment 298 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 170
Paragraph 170
170. Regrets however, that the disparity in income distribution increased between 2013 and 2014 and, even though it has remained stable since then, in some cases it has continued to grow;
Amendment 303 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 183 – point c
Paragraph 183 – point c
(c) in Italy, a counter-factual evaluation showed that new innovative policies largely supported by the YEI increased the occupational chances of young people by 7.8%, despite significant regional differences which show there are greater difficulties in the areas with the highest youth unemployment rates;
Amendment 304 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 183 – point c a (new)
Paragraph 183 – point c a (new)
(ca) in Italy there have been unacceptable delays in payments to trainees under the Youth Guarantee, which call for a careful monitoring of the situation and a specific action plan for those Member States in which this problem is occurring;
Amendment 310 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 187 – point c a (new)
Paragraph 187 – point c a (new)
Amendment 323 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 192 a (new)
Paragraph 192 a (new)
192a. Calls on the Commission to provide for further simplification of the rules and a reduction of the administrative burden in order to help decrease the error rate even more;
Amendment 332 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 201 a (new)
Paragraph 201 a (new)
201a. Calls on the Commission to provide for a genuine simplification of the procedure, including in the documentation requested in order to have access to funding, without neglecting the principles of control and monitoring; calls for special attention to be paid to administrative support for small-scale producers, for whom the funding is a vital prerequisite for their business survival;
Amendment 341 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 211 a (new)
Paragraph 211 a (new)
211a. Regrets the recent cases of fraud relating to paying agencies in Italy; calls on the Commission to actively monitor the situation and provide the relevant details to Parliament in the follow-up to the discharge procedure;
Amendment 388 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 253 a (new)
Paragraph 253 a (new)
253a. Regards it as essential that suspension of pre-accession funding should be possible not only in cases of proven misuse of funds, but also in cases where pre-accession countries violate in any way the rights laid down in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights;
Amendment 394 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 254 a (new)
Paragraph 254 a (new)
254a. Calls on the Commission to draft its Strategy Papers more carefully, so as to provide a more wide-ranging and accurate assessment of funding requirements and of the best instruments to use;
Amendment 397 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 254 b (new)
Paragraph 254 b (new)
254b. Considers it essential for the administrative capacity of the countries which receive funding to be actively supported by the Commission through appropriate technical assistance;
Amendment 405 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 264 – point f a (new)
Paragraph 264 – point f a (new)
(fa) the Commission to provide for a monitoring system with a view to ensuring that the human rights of refugees and asylum seekers are respected;
Amendment 406 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 264 – point f b (new)
Paragraph 264 – point f b (new)
(fb) the Commission to step up the checks carried out on funds for refugees, which are frequently allocated by the Member States in emergency situations without complying with the rules in force at the time;
Amendment 423 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 268 – point e a (new)
Paragraph 268 – point e a (new)
(ea) the detailed publication of Commissioners' mission expenses;