Activities of Isabel GARCÍA MUÑOZ related to 2020/2146(DEC)
Shadow reports (1)
REPORT on discharge in respect of the implementation of the general budget of the European Union for the financial year 2019, Section VII – Committee of the Regions
Amendments (24)
Amendment 1 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 1
Paragraph 1
1. Notes with satisfaction that the Court of Auditors (the ‘Court’), in its annual report for 2019, observed that no significant weaknesses had been identified in respect of the audited topics relating to human resources and procurement for the Committee of the Regions (the ‘Committee’);
Amendment 2 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 2
Paragraph 2
2. States with satisfactionWelcomes that based on its audit work, the Court concluded that the payments as a whole for the year ended 31 December 2019, the administrative and other expenditure of the Committee were free from material error and that the examined supervisory and control systems were effective;
Amendment 4 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 5
Paragraph 5
5. Underlines that the commitment execution rate for Title 1 ‘Expenditure relating to persons working with the institution’ was 99,6 % and for Title 2 ‘Buildings, furniture, equipment and miscellaneous operating expenditure’ 99,7 %; notes with satisfaction that approximately EUR 400 000 (0,4 %) were uncommitted at the end of the year and thus returned to the Union budget, which was a reductions compared to 2018 where approximately EUR 700 000 (0,7 %) were left uncommitted;
Amendment 7 #
7. Acknowledges the Committee’s continued efforts to reinforce its political role and to face the increased need for permanent expertise in political and administrative domains; notes the talent pool created to motivate and retain experienced staff in the Committee; notes that the first general internal competition in the history of the Committee was finalised in the first half of 2019 with a total of 40 laureates out of 113 candidate staff members; asks the Committee to explain the concrete professional prospects offered to the laureates;
Amendment 9 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 8
Paragraph 8
8. AcknowledgeRegrets that the situation in terms of gender balance in middle and senior management positions has not improved but has remained relatively stable since 2018 with 35 % of these positions being filled by women; acknowledges that a new equal opportunity strategy containing concrete objectives to be reached by 2025 is being adopted and should enter in force in 2020;
Amendment 12 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 9
Paragraph 9
9. Encourages the Committee to continue its efforts to achieve gender balance at all hierarchal levels and welcomes actions such as the mandatory presence of both genders on selection panels, the active encouragement of female applicants for all managerial positions, specific training sessions for female staff who wish to prepare for a managerial career and more flexible working arrangements, including the possibility for part time work and telework; notes the range of incentives put in place by the Committee such as the formal recognition of management responsibilities below head of unit level and the creation of an informal Network for gender balance in management launched with the support of the administration;
Amendment 16 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 9 a (new)
Paragraph 9 a (new)
9 a. Acknowledges that the new equal opportunity strategy focuses also on disability and diversity; notes the trainings regarding unconscious bias for managers and HR staff involved in selection procedures; asks the Committee to report to the budgetary authority on the specific objectives, actions and indicators within the strategy;
Amendment 17 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 10
Paragraph 10
10. Appreciates the Committee’s focus on developing and upholding high-quality health and well-being services based on prevention and early intervention through close cooperation between the HR services concerned, and awareness-raising programmes among staff and managers; welcomes the training sessions held with managers at both junior, middle and senior level on the topic of absence management and successful integration of colleagues after long-term absence; notes that ten cases of burnout were registered in 2019; notes that the Committee’s Social Service provides assistance during the illness period and upon return to work; asks the Committee to include burnout detection in its health and well-being services;
Amendment 19 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 11
Paragraph 11
11. Underlines that the Committee uses contract staff mainly to provide appropriate support in the form of replacements for mid to long term absences and for specific projects in different directorates with the objective of providing additional support to members of the Committee; reminds, however, that the use of contract staff also entails considerable loss of knowledge and expertise for the Committee at the end of their contracts and thus encourages the Committee to keep on negotiating the enlargement of its establishment plan;
Amendment 33 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 20
Paragraph 20
20. Notes the guiding principles of the Committee's building strategy which include the geographical concentration of buildings, the preference for ownership rather than lease, a sustainable building management and multi-annual planning; notes that the working group set up jointly with the European Economic and Social Committee (EESC) established guidelines for the attribution of office space, taking into account the situation in other Union bodies; appreciates that these parameters were presented to and discussed with staff representatives; acknowledges the Committee’s transparent and cooperative approach vis-à-vis staff representatives; notes that a total of 241 work stations are not in use and asks the Committee to explain its plans for those work stations within the current building strategy;
Amendment 34 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 21
Paragraph 21
21. Recognises that the Committee together with the EESC has given instructions to remove asbestos in autumn 2020 in full respect of the necessary protection measures during the works as requested in the 2018 discharge resolution; welcomes the fact that most of the buildings of both the Committee and the EESC are either asbestos free or, as in the case of the VMA building, asbestos-saf; expresses its concerns over the health of the workers and the presence of asbestos in the VMA building, although acknowledges that the Committee has received an asbestos-safe certificate;
Amendment 35 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 22
Paragraph 22
22. Underlines that the Committee formulates clear key performance indicators for its different administrative areas by formulating objectives, results and the related number of human resources; asks the Committee to provide in addition to this very detailed setting a consolidated version of the major objectives and the results achieved in the next annual activity report, in which it asks the Committee to explore more reader-friendly data visualisation options for the key performance indicator tables;
Amendment 38 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 24
Paragraph 24
24. Notes that monitoring of the internal audit function is provided by the audit committee composed of one member per political group of the Committee’s commission of financial and administrative affairs and one high-level external advisor; observes that in 2019 the audit committee held two meetings where the 2018 annual internal report and the 2020 work programme wasere presented and members were informed about the progress achieved with regard to the state of play of ongoing audits and the open recommendations as well as the related risks; notes that 57 % of very important recommendations were closed after 6 months (target for 2019- 2020: 75%) and 100% of very important recommendations were closed after 12 months (target for 2019-2020: 100%); suggests the Committee to include a summary of the audit recommendations in its annual activity report;
Amendment 39 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 25
Paragraph 25
25. Observes that the internal financial rules for the implementation of the Committee’s budget were updated on 1 January 2019 by its decision No 0014/2018 and have been implemented throughout 2019 by including; notes with satisfaction the inclusion of the operational agents as formal actors in the financial approval workflow and furthermore bythe appointingment of managers responsible for operational management as authorising officers by sub- delegation;
Amendment 40 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 27
Paragraph 27
27. Calls on the Committee to strengthen its efforts in analysing the situation to attain a fully paperless tendering environment for all procurement procedures; notes that this would make it necessary to acquire the public procurement management tool developed by the Commission’s Joint Research Centre), alongside the development or acquisition of an improved back-office document management system; notes that the existing 'Paperless workflow from invoice to payment' procedure was extended to a number of additional units/directorates in the course of 2019 and that the Committee’s objective for the coming years is to broaden the scope of the paperless workflows also to other types of transactions taking into account available IT resources;
Amendment 41 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 32
Paragraph 32
32. Welcomes the cooperation agreement of 5 February 2012 which remains in place between the Committee and Parliament and which covers political cooperation between Parliament and the Committee and administrative cooperation between Parliament, the Committee and the EESC; asks the Committee that it be informed on the outcome of the revision of this agreement; notes the agreement with the Commission from 2005 with an addendum from 2007; notes that the negotiations for a new agreement for administrative cooperation with the EESC (the existing agreement has been entered into for the period 2016-2020) were postponed due to the COVID-19-crisis which added to the complexity of the changes of mandate of the Committee in early 2020 and the EESC in autumn 2020; notes that the Committee and the EESC therefore agreed to extend the current agreement until 30 June 2021;
Amendment 42 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 34
Paragraph 34
34. Asks the Committee to report back on any control mechanism to ensure an efficient management of the joint services; appreciates the importance of the administrative cooperation between the Committee and the EESC via the joint services, where some 470 staff (of which around 170 staff belong to the Committee) and more than EUR 50 million yearly (of which some EUR 22 million come from the Committee), excluding salary related expenditure, are pooled by the Committee and the EESC,; notes that together with the concerned salary related expenditure, the yearly monetary value of the joint services arrangement exceeds EUR 100 million; notes that the negotiations for a new agreement for administrative cooperation with the EESC (the existing agreement has been entered into for the period 2016- 2020) were postponed due to the COVID- 19-crisis which added to the complexity of the changes of mandate of the Committee in early 2020 and the EESC in autumn 2020; notes that the Committee and the EESC therefore agreed to extend the current agreement until 30 June 2021;
Amendment 46 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 35
Paragraph 35
35. Supports the Committee and the EESC in the view that in the event of an extension of the current agreement or of a new agreement with Parliament all outstanding issues such as the unbalanced situation for the Committee and the EESC, which transferred a total of 60 translators to Parliament (24 from the Committee) and in exchange obtained only the use of the services of the European Parliamentary Research Service must be settled; notes with concern that as a consequence the Committee and the EESC had to hire contract staff and outsourced their translation services which resulted in an effective budget reduction; is aware of the requests expressed by both the Committee and the EESC in the frame of the discharge procedure for the ongoing cooperation agreement to be respected so that the Committee and the EESC are compensated for the posts transferred to the European Parliament Research Service (EPRS); asks the three involved parties to jointly report to Parliament’s Committee on Budgetary Control concerning the ongoing revision of the agreement;
Amendment 49 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 36
Paragraph 36
36. Notes, however, that the cooperation with Parliament at the administrative level is successful; agrees with the need to further enhance political cooperation with respect to the annual and multi-annual programming, the joint declaration of Parliament, the Council and the Commission on legislative priorities and the monitoring of the annual work programme; supports the Committee’s concrete recommendations to develop a more systematic approach to the political cooperation given the importance of the Committee as the representative of regions and cities in the Union;
Amendment 55 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 39
Paragraph 39
39. Underlines that on 5 December 2019 the Committee adopted a code of conduct for its members laying down a detailed procedure in the event of alleged harassment of a member of staff by a Committee member, which is largely based on Parliament's Bureau’s Decision of 2 July 2018 on harassment complaints; notwelcomes that the code of conduct includes a number of sanctions in order to ensure its observance and that the Committee has set up an advisory board on harassment;
Amendment 59 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 44
Paragraph 44
44. Recalls that the third invalidity committee unanimously confirmed that the invalidity of the former internal auditor, Mr McCoy, arose from a was invalided out on occupational disease,grounds and that, consequently, on 26 June 2019 the Committee formally endorsed this conclusion; notes that pursuant to article 78(5) of the staff regulations Mr McCoy was reimbursed in July 2019 in respect of all his contributions to the pension scheme between the date he started receiving the invalidity allowance (1 July 2007) and the day before he started receiving retirement pension (31 July 2010);
Amendment 62 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 45
Paragraph 45
45. Reminds that based on the 2017 discharge resolution the appointment of a Member of Parliament Sophie in't Veld as mediator took place and that all parties entered into a mediation process lead by Sophie in't Veld to bring this dispute to an end with the objective of reaching an amicable settlement; acknowledges that the Committee pursued the scheduled mediation meetings with Mr McCoy which finally resulted in a Committee’s proposal of 20 December 2020;
Amendment 64 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 46
Paragraph 46
46. aAppreciates the exchange held in the context of the 2019 discharge procedure on 10 November 2020 with the mediator, the former internal auditor and a representative of the Committee; underlines the importance of deescalating the situation and bringing the positions of the former internal auditor and of the Committee together; welcomes the mediator’s suggestion of a meeting between the President of the Committee and Mr McCoy as a starting point for reconciliation before any negotiations will take place;
Amendment 69 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 47
Paragraph 47
47. Welcomes the letter of 10 November 2020 sent to the chairperson of Parliament’s Committee on Budgetary Control by the chairperson of the Committee’s committee on financial and administrative affairs confirming the readiness of the Committee’s President to meet the former internal auditor; notes that the Committee’s president had a bilateral meeting with the former internal auditor on 19 November 2020 in order to pwelcomes the follow-up meetings between the mediator, the 2019 discharge rapporteur, the former internal auditor and the Committee’s repare for the next steps; welcomes the follow-up meetings between the mediator, the 2019 discharge rapporteur, the former internal auditor andsentatives; warmly welcomes the letter of 4 December 2019 announcing that the first phase of the procedure for an agreement was concluded with a joint statement signed by the Committee’'s representative in s and the fordmer to launch the negotiations for concluding definitively the affaireinternal auditor; encourage the parties to find an agreement to settle the financial part and reminds its disposal to support the negotiation; appreciates the efforts made by all parties, acknowledges that an important first step was taken and believes an agreement should be reached soon;