Activities of Rasmus ANDRESEN related to 2021/2162(INI)
Plenary speeches (1)
The revision of the Financial Regulation in view of the entry into force of the 2021-2027 multiannual financial framework (debate)
Shadow reports (1)
REPORT on the revision of the Financial Regulation in view of the entry into force of the 2021-2027 multiannual financial framework
Amendments (27)
Amendment 3 #
Motion for a resolution
Citation 16 a (new)
Citation 16 a (new)
— having regard to the decision of the European Ombudsman in joint inquiry 853/2020/KR on the European Commission’s decision to award a contract to BlackRock Investment Management to carry out a study on integrating environmental, social and governance (ESG) objectives into EU banking rules,
Amendment 16 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 1
Paragraph 1
1. Notes that the upcoming revision of the Financial Regulation is needed as a consequence of the entry into force of the MFF 2021-2027 package, including NGEU, as well as to ensure the proper implementation of the Inter-Institutional Agreement on budgetary discipline, on cooperation in budgetary matters and on sound financial management, as well as on new own resources, including a roadmap for the introduction of new own resources, which not only updates legal provisions but also contains significant innovations within the budgetary system;
Amendment 20 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 2
Paragraph 2
2. Believes that the revision should seek to modernise the rules applicable to the EU budget in line with its latest evolutions and in line with the budgetary principles, and to increase parliamentary oversight, transparency, democratic accountability, civic engagement and the ability to respond to citizens’ needs;
Amendment 24 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 3
Paragraph 3
3. Is of the opinion that, while a global overhaul of the rules applicable to the budget is not needed at this time, the Financial Regulation must be subject to targeted improvements and simplifications, in particular where they increase transparency and democratic scrutiny as well as provide for a better implementation of the EU budget;
Amendment 35 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 4
Paragraph 4
4. Notes that the number and scope of off-budget instruments have grown significantly in the past decade, and that NGEU has taken this practice to the next level, by greatly, if temporarily, increasing the magnitude of the EU budget in the form of external assigned revenue, and creating liabilities until 2058 through borrowing for lending and borrowing for direct EU expenditure; warns that these developments put at risk central budgetary principles such as unity and budgetary accuracy, equilibrium and universality;
Amendment 43 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 5
Paragraph 5
5. Is concerned that these mechanismusing externally assigned revenues pose a serious challenge to the ability of the Parliament to fulfil its decision-making, scrutiny and discharge functions; strongly believes thatreminds of the Joint Declaration and reaffirms that it expects EU financial rules musto be updated as regards the role of the budgetary authority in relation to these mechanisms, in order to bring them closer to the principles and responsibilities set out in the Treaties;
Amendment 50 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 6
Paragraph 6
6. Believes that Parliament, as one arm of the budgetary authority, should be able to scrutinise and authorise as appropriate the Commission’s plans with respect to the management of external assigned revenue and of its borrowing and lending operations; suggests that relevant articles of the Financial Regulation, including Articles 7, 46 and 56, be revised to clarify that assets and liabilities linked to borrowing and lending operations are included in the EU budget, thus fully under the control and reporting of the European Court of Auditors;
Amendment 66 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 9
Paragraph 9
9. Emphasises the clear linkrelationship between respect for the rule of law and the efficient implementation of the Union budget in accordance with the principles of sound financial management: economy, efficiency and effectiveness, as laid down in the Financial Regulation; highlights in this regard that fraudulent and corrupt practices by definition violate sound financial management as defined in Article 33 (1) of the Financial Regulation with regard to economy and efficiency given that such practices are directly at odds with assuring the best quantity, quality at the best price, and with achieving the optimal relationship between resources employed and objectives achieved; recalls that, upon adoption of the Conditionality Regulation, Parliament, the Council and the Commission agreed to consider including the content of the Conditionality Regulation into the Financial Regulation upon its next revision, and calls on the Commission to include this in the revision linked to the 2021-2027 MFF; calls on the Commission to examine possibilities to further strengthen coherence between the two instruments in particular, to ensure sound financial management; believes that the Commission should pay particular attention to the effects of Member States not fulfilling their duties as laid down in Article 63(2) with a particular focus on preventive ex-ante measures;
Amendment 73 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 9 a (new)
Paragraph 9 a (new)
9 a. Stresses the need to protect the EU budget and the EU tax payers' money from any form of conflict of interests; encourages the Commission to further strengthen the conflict of interests provisions under article 61 of the Financial Regulation in particular with regards to the preparation of the budget, e.g. by listing the institutions participating in the preparation of the budget, in order to determine more precisely which public officers can effectively influence financial flows from the EU budget; calls on the Commission to provide for procedural solutions capable of dealing with situations where the public officer does not have a hierarchical superior, in particular by obliging the institution in which the public officer has the possibility of influencing financial flows from the EU budget, to exclude such public person from the activities of the institution relating to the EU budget;
Amendment 76 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 10
Paragraph 10
10. Stresses that it is important to know whow EU funds are spent and who truly benefits from EU funds in order to protect the financial interests of the EU and to detect fraud, corruption and conflicts of interest in particular; notes that data for identifying economic operators and their beneficial owners is not easily, or not at all, accessible12 ; considers that the centralisation of the information in a single, interoperable and user friendly public EU database with information on direct and ultimate beneficiaries, with data accessible in a machine readable format, would overcome the identified fragmentation and lack of transparency as well as enhance public scrutiny and trust in EU public spending; stresses the urgency in establishing transparency for beneficial owners in light of the Pandora Papers; _________________ 12Study on the largest 50 beneficiaries in each EU Member State of CAP and Cohesion Funds, requested by the CONT Committee, PE 679.107 - May 2021.
Amendment 85 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 11
Paragraph 11
11. Emphasises that the Financial Regulation should include provisions that require the responsible actors to gather and keep uniform records of economic operators and beneficial owners in order to allow identification across EU programmes, regardless of who implements these programmes and of management mode; considers that these requirements should be balanced to reflect strictly relevant information items; underlines that data may only be published in line with data protection requirements and the standing jurisprudereflect all relevant information items to enhance of the Court of Justice of the European Union; considers that compulsory information items collected for audit and control purposes need to include as a minimum the registration number of legal entities, national identification number for natural persons, an indication of the type of beneficiary, sub-contractors, beneficial owners, whether the beneficiary also receives State aid and contact information; underlines that the system needs to facilitate the aggregation of individual amounts concerning the same direct or ultimate beneficiary; considers that publicly accessible systems should facilitate both individual searches through a web-based tool and systemic analysis through bulk downloadsmmission’s capability and capacity to detect fraud;
Amendment 89 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 11 a (new)
Paragraph 11 a (new)
11 a. Underlines that data should be published openly as a general principle, while respecting data protection requirements and the standing jurisprudence of the Court of Justice of the European Union; considers that compulsory information items collected for audit and control purposes need to include as a minimum the registration number of legal entities, national identification number for natural persons, the relevant code or uniquely identifying specific EU funding program, an indication of the type of beneficiary, sub- contractors, beneficial owners, whether the beneficiary also receives State aid and contact information; stresses that the database should not be exclusively self- regulated but datasets should be created by the Commission or an external authority in order to ensure coherent and high-quality data;
Amendment 91 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 11 b (new)
Paragraph 11 b (new)
11 b. Underlines that the system needs to facilitate the aggregation of individual amounts concerning the same direct or ultimate beneficiary; considers that publicly accessible systems should facilitate both individual searches through a web-based tool and systemic analysis through bulk downloads in machine readable and interoperable format; Stresses that standardised, open data across the full cycle of all procurements including the ultimate beneficiaries of contracted companies, will provide civil society and nongovernmental actors with the complement of tools and required information to monitor the integrity, fairness and efficiency of public procurement markets;
Amendment 94 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 12
Paragraph 12
12. Considers that Article 63 of the Financial Regulation should be modified to include ARACHNE as a compulsory risk scoring tool made available by the Commission to Member States and other implementing partners and to oblige implementing partners to feed information into it; considers that the Financial Regulation should also indicate which indicators ARACHNE uses to determine the risk score of economic operators; considers that any additional administrative burden, from inserting information multiple times in various IT systems, including ARACHNE, must be avoidedalls for maximum interoperability between ARACHNE and the different implementing software used; stresses the importance of the full ownership and operational rights of ARACHNE tool and calls on the Commission to consider moving the tool’s management fully in-house;
Amendment 95 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 13
Paragraph 13
13. CallRecalls that a high-level panel has been established to assess this in 2018 and calls for its findings to be presented to the Parliament before the Commission makes a proposal to update the Financial Regulation; insists for the use of the Early Detection and Exclusion System (EDES) to be made compulsory also under shared management; further notes that EDES does not distinguish between subsidiaries of larger corporations; calls on the Commission to make this distinction and to specify in the rules for early detection and for exclusion which entity of a multi- national or multi-company corporation is registered for early detection or exclusion; calls for the obligation to update EDES once fraud or other relevant facts have been established by actors involved in the implementation; believes that legal entities or natural persons disqualified through EDES could no longer be a final recipient or beneficiary to whom any payments from the EU budget are owned; further calls on the Commission to encourage the Member States that these entities or natural persons are also excluded from any contributions from national-budgets;
Amendment 101 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 13 a (new)
Paragraph 13 a (new)
13 a. Calls for the inclusion of the obligatory publication of all tenders in the scope of the Financial Regulation in machine readable open formats to improve tracking and delivery of public contracts, adding automated indicators of risks to identify areas where increased control is needed and the publication of comprehensive and standardised information across the public procurement cycle in open data formats by including public procurement information into the list of "High-Value datasets" under the Directive on open data and the re-use of public sector information;
Amendment 112 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 14 a (new)
Paragraph 14 a (new)
14 a. Calls for the inclusion of the implementation of the do no harm principle in the Financial Regulation; stresses that the guidance published for the RRF should be seen as the standard for all other expenditure of the same nature; reminds that the implementation of the principle as regards biodiversity must go beyond the full respect of relevant EU acquis;
Amendment 118 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 15
Paragraph 15
15. Suggests that the re-use of decommitted appropriations as a result of full or partial non-implementation of projects pursuant to Article 15(3) of the Financial Regulation should be extended beyond research and innovation, to include all appropriations that support social policies, youth and humanitarian aid; believes that decommitted appropriations should be made available in their entirety the year following that of their decommitment;
Amendment 125 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 16
Paragraph 16
16. Suggests that the Financial Regulation be revised to guarantee the appropriate role of Parliament in the setting up and scrutiny of any new trust funds, including in the drawing up of the constitutive agreement and the mobilisation of the Union’s contribution, the implementation, continuation and possible liquidation;
Amendment 129 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 17
Paragraph 17
17. Notes that the Commission’s Vademecum on public procurement was last updated in January 2020; notes that the current definition of ‘professional conflict of interest’ is limited to a conflicting interest that affects the capacity of an economic operator to perform a contract; calls on the Commission to provide for a more explicit definition and to ensure that its implementation rules on public procurement do not permit the awarding of policy-related service contracts to undertakings that are under the economic control of a parent company or a group that owns shares related to activities that are not in line with the EU’s environmental, social and Green Deal objectives; calls for including the safeguards in public procurement to reject companies whose activities contradict social and environmental objectives of the European Union;
Amendment 132 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 17 a (new)
Paragraph 17 a (new)
17 a. Recalls the European Ombudsman’s decision1a in the case of the European Commission's decision to award a contract for a study on integrating environmental, social and governance objectives into EU banking rules to BlackRock Investment Management; stresses the need to ensure that similar conflicts of interest do not arise in the future; encourages the Commission to make proposals to update and strengthen the applicable rules in the EU Financial Regulation in order to address this type of possible conflicts of interest and to further increase the transparency of the tender procedures; _________________ 1a https://www.ombudsman.europa.eu/en/de cision/en/135363
Amendment 135 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 17 b (new)
Paragraph 17 b (new)
17 b. Insists that the Commission follow the suggestion made by the European Ombudsman1b to amend recital 104 and article 167 of the Financial Regulation to provide a definition of ‘professional conflicting interest’ so as to ensure that EU institutions, including the European Commission, exclude bidders with a direct or indirect financial interest in a policy- related service contract. In the same vein, the Commission should provide corresponding and clear guidelines on possible conflicts of interests to assist its staff dealing with public procurement procedures for policy-related service contracts; _________________ 1bIn her decision in joint inquiry 853/2020/KR on the European Commission’s decision to award a contract to BlackRock Investment Management to carry out a study on integrating environmental, social and governance (ESG) objectives into EU banking rules
Amendment 136 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 17 c (new)
Paragraph 17 c (new)
17 c. Calls for a clear definition of professional conflicting interests that would include a conflict on the ground of a direct or indirect financial interest; stresses the need of assessing indirect financial or economic interests in policy related service contracts; calls for a revision of the Vademecum to reject bidders with a direct or indirect financial stake in the policy area concerned;
Amendment 144 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 19 a (new)
Paragraph 19 a (new)
19 a. Recalls that the three institutions acknowledge that the existing rules on audits and discharge procedure apply to assigned revenue and calls for this to be properly reflected in the Financial Regulation;
Amendment 145 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 19 b (new)
Paragraph 19 b (new)
19 b. Recalls that according to Article 118(9) of the Financial Regulation, reports and findings of the internal auditor shall be accessible to the public only after validation by the internal auditor of the action taken for their implementation; regrets that in practice, this results in (Parliament’s) audit reports only being published several years after their finalisation; calls for the respective provision in the Financial Regulation to be reformulated in a way that would see the institutions publish its internal audit reports without any limitations due to any later validation process that in fact represents a follow-up to the original report;
Amendment 146 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 19 c (new)
Paragraph 19 c (new)
19 c. Considers it regrettable that audit and contradictory procedures, as well as procedures on the application of financial correction, currently stretch out over several years; urges the Commission to revise the rules of audit and financial correction procedures to allow for more timely conclusions and recovery of unduly paid out EU funds;
Amendment 152 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 23
Paragraph 23
23. Encourages the Commission and Member States to exploit the opportunities for simplified cost options to their full potential; considers that the focus of checks should be on ex ante verification of the calculations of the simplified cost options, while ex post verifications should be used to improve the system of calculation, except in cases of suspected fraud;