12 Amendments of Patricija ŠULIN related to 2016/2206(DEC)
Amendment 2 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 1
Paragraph 1
1. Emphasises that the agencies have significant influence on policy and decision making and programme implementation in areas of vital importance to European citizens, such as health, the environment, human and social rights, migration, refugees, innovation, financial supervision, safety and security; reiterates the importance of the tasks performed by agencies and their direct impact on the daily lives of Union citizens; insists on the positive impactessential role that agencies have in enhancing the visibility of the Union in the Member States; reiterates also the importance of the autonomy of the agencies, in particular of the regulatory agencies and those with the function of independent information collection; recalls that the main reason for establishing agencies was for the purpose of making independent technical or scientific assessments;
Amendment 6 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 2 a (new)
Paragraph 2 a (new)
2 a. Underlines that as noted in 2014 and in 2015 Court of Auditors' reports, the agencies in the areas of freedom, security and justice have not provided information needed to allow the discharge authority to properly evaluate the cost- benefit analysis of the operations and activities of these agencies; for instance 13.000 law enforcement officers were trained by CEPOL in 2015 and there is no evaluation report on the cost-efficiency of this training; urges the agencies and the Court of Auditors to perform cost-benefits analysis for agencies' activities and publish them; stresses the need of analysis and transparency of the use of the tax payers money;
Amendment 7 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 2 b (new)
Paragraph 2 b (new)
2 b. Regrets that in spite of the request made in the previous reports, for some agencies the declaration of interests are incomplete or missing; calls on the Members of the Management Board of Frontex from Bulgaria, Belgium, France, Latvia, Lithuania, Sweden, Portugal and the representative of the European Commission to publish their statements of commitments to the Agency including their declarations of interests; calls on the Members of the Management Board of EASO from Croatia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Slovenia to publish their declaration of interests; calls on the agencies to draft and submit to the discharge authority a track record of cases of conflict of interest identified;
Amendment 8 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 2 c (new)
Paragraph 2 c (new)
2 c. In several agencies the members of the Management Board and the Executives published "declaration of absence of conflict of interest" instead of "declaration of interest"; underlines that it is not for the Management Board or for the Executives to declare themselves out of the conflict of interest; stresses that this constitutes in itself a conflict of interest; calls for an independent verification of the "declarations of interest"; reiterates that transparency is key to mitigating the risks of conflicts of interest; deplores the fact that not all agencies have established clear rules regarding the protection of whistle-blowers and "revolving doors" and urges them to put in place such rules as a matter of urgency;
Amendment 9 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 11
Paragraph 11
11. Acknowledges the administrative burden that the implementation of the Roadmap has caused to the agencies, as well as the “outsourcing” of several tasks related to collecting and consolidating agencies’ data and input to the Network, in particular with regard to the budgetary and discharge procedure; calls on the Commission and the budgetary authority to recognise these efforts, and to provide additional resources in the establishment plan of the agencies, in particular related to the functions of the Network’s permanent secretariat;
Amendment 9 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 2 d (new)
Paragraph 2 d (new)
2 d. Welcomes the efforts made by several agencies to improve their budgetary management by optimizing the use of their budgets and by implementing a better budgetary planning process; regrets however that some agencies do not mind the principle of annuality as one of the three basic accounting principles; calls on the agencies to improve the budget planning against activities and reduce the carry overs;
Amendment 10 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 2 e (new)
Paragraph 2 e (new)
2 e. Deplores that the Court of Auditors failed to present since 2012 a special report on the conflict of interest in all agencies, in particular in those related to industries; urges the Court of Auditors to undertake the effective verifications of this matter and to produce such special reports on conflict of interests until the end of June 2017.
Amendment 12 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 20 a (new)
Paragraph 20 a (new)
20a. Notes from the Court that the agencies generally award and pay grants in compliance with rules, however most agencies have not addressed alternative funding options, while grants do not always represent the most effective option to achieve agencies´ objectives; invites the agencies to improve their grant management and to focus on measuring the effectiveness of the grants awarded;
Amendment 12 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 3
Paragraph 3
3. Welcomes the commitment of all JHA Agencies to continue to further fine- tune budgetary procedures but stresses, however, that their priority should be to improve operational efficiency on the ground and to address the rather structural issues identified by the Court of Auditors and the IAS; requests that FRONTEX streamline its financial management procedures by obtaining rights of using “simplified cost options” for the reimbursement of Member States’ expenditure and by using “other funding mechanisms” in addition to grants; requests that EU-LISA better address the risks involved with the implementation of high cost infrastructure projects by fully adopting the financial regulation of the Union; requests that EUROJUST avoid sub-optimal budget management due to uncertainties as to the availability of funds in order to implement its on-going projects and to procure its essential services;
Amendment 17 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 27
Paragraph 27
27. Notes with concern that the Commission applied an additional levy of 5 % of staff to the agencies in order to create a redeployment pool from which it would allocate the posts to the agencies with new tasks entrusted to them or in a start-up phase; is particularly concerned that with the additional staff reduction, fulfilment of the Agency’s mandates and annual work programmes proves increasingly difficult, particularly for the agencies classified by the Commission as “cruising speed agencies”; calls on the Commission and the budgetary authority to look into other options in orderensure that potential further cost saving measures do not to hinder the agencies’´ abilityies to fulfil their mandates effectively;
Amendment 29 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 31
Paragraph 31
31. Takes note that the CVs and declarations of interests of the management board members, management staff and in house experts were published by 84 % of the agencies, compared to 74 % in the previous year; notes moreover that 60 % of the agencies check the factual correctness of the given declarations of interests of experts, management board and staff at least once a year; encourages thecalls on the remaining agencies which have not yet introduced such policy to verify the declarations on regular basis, if their resources allow for it;
Amendment 35 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 33 a (new)
Paragraph 33 a (new)