42 Amendments of Michal WIEZIK related to 2023/2129(DEC)
Amendment 11 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 2
Paragraph 2
2. Highlights the importance of the Union budget for achieving the Union’s political priorities, as well as its role in assisting Member States in unforeseen circumstances such as the COVID-19 pandemic, international conflicts or crisis and their consequences; notes in this regard the continuing relevance of investments and support from the Union budget for reducing disparities between Member States and regions, for promoting economic growth and employment, for combating poverty and social exclusion, and thus for improving the daily life of Union citizens and economic impact within the EU;
Amendment 13 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 3
Paragraph 3
3. Stresses that the sound and timely implementation of the budget contributes to addressing more efficiently and effectively the needs and challenges in different policy areas; warns that the implementation of the budget under time pressure may lead to an increase in errors and irregularities; recalls the role of the Commission as guardian of the treaty to protect the European financial interests;
Amendment 16 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 4
Paragraph 4
4. Stresses the Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF)'s contribution to support Member States in recovering from the economic and social consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic and creating a resilient Union that can shoulder the challenges of the future; notes the contribution of the RRF and RePowerEU in addressing the energy-related challenges caused by the Russia’s war of agression against Ukraine; calls on the Commission and the Member States to implement the associated actions swiftly in accordance with the agreed milestones and targets; regrets that milestones have not been better defined and more strictly monitored by the Commission;
Amendment 20 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 5
Paragraph 5
5. Highlights the crucial role the Union budget played in 2022 in addressing the fall-out of Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine to secure food supply chains, address energy-related challenges, support Member States in welcoming Ukrainian refugees, and provide assistance to Ukraine in caring for its citizens; notes that this has put pressure on the budget and that all available flexibility measures have been used; notes in that regard the proposals made by the Commission in the Multi- annual Financial Framework (MFF) review to re-orient funds and to raise fresh funds, and calls on the Council to swiftly move forward with the adoption of the proposals;
Amendment 29 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 6
Paragraph 6
6. Recalls the utmost importance of carrying out an ex-post evaluation of financial programmes created to respond to a crisis concerning their effectiveness, economic impact and performance, efficiency, relevance, coherence and Union added value;
Amendment 35 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 7
Paragraph 7
7. Emphasises the role and the importance of a strengthened cooperation of the European anti-fraud office (OLAF), the European Public Prosecutor's Office (EPPO), the European Union Agency for Criminal Justice Cooperation (Eurojust) and the European Union Agency for Law Enforcement Cooperation (Europol) in the fight against corruption; calls for the capacities of the EPPO and OLAF, as well as cooperation between them, to be strengthened further; calls for common anti-corruption rules applicable to all staff of Union bodies and calls to make the interinstitutional Transparency register mandatory for all EU institutions even agencies;
Amendment 38 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 8
Paragraph 8
8. Welcomes the measures undertaken by the Commission in 2022 and 2023 under the Rule of Law conditionality mechanism for the protection of the Union budget and asks the Commission to continue to be vigiladuct thorough assments and ensure adequate control mechanisms to guarantee the sound financial management and the proatectiveon of the EU Budget in the current and future cases when the lack of respect for Union values and the Rule of Law affect or threaten to affect the Union’s financial interests; call on the Commission to make full use of the tools available to address the clear risk of a serious breach of the EU values on which the Union is founded;
Amendment 44 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 9
Paragraph 9
Amendment 50 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 11
Paragraph 11
11. Is concerned that the late adoption of several sectoral regulations governing different Union policies, such as the Cohesion policy, resulted in a significant delay in the implementation of the 2021- 2027 programming period; urges the Commission and the Member States once moreto take all the necessary measures to continue to speed up the implementation of the policies on the ground with a better geographical balance, while keeping a high focus on compliance with the rules, achievement of results and protection of the financial interests of the Union; highlights in this context the importance of avoiding decommitments which in turn would decrease the impact of the Union budget;
Amendment 52 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 11 a (new)
Paragraph 11 a (new)
11 a. Calls on the Commission to take initiatives such as technical assistance to increase the absorption rate in the Member States on a permanent basis; calls on the Commission to closely monitor the progress of implementation in Member States, in particular in the cases of under-implementation and low absorption rates and to deliver a country- analysis to the discharge authority, identifying the recurrent problems, as well as the measures taken to optimise the situation;
Amendment 70 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 19
Paragraph 19
19. Notes that the Court estimates the level of error for the 2022 expenditure to be 4,2 % (3 % in 2021), which is above the materiality threshold; notes the Commission’s confidence that the risk at payment is estimated at 1.9 % for 2022 (similar to 2020, 2021 and 2022), is representative of the level of error at the time of payment; notes that the Commission’s estimation of the risk at closure, after ex-post controls and corrections have been applied, is 0.9 %; notes thecalls to find a common understanding to avoid such divergence between the Court’s overall error rate and the Commission’s risk at payment, which is observed for the overall Union budget expenditure in 2022, although not in all expenditure areas;
Amendment 74 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 20
Paragraph 20
20. Underlines that the general estimate of the level of error in the Union budget, as presented in the Court’s Statement of Assurance, is an estimate of the money that should not have been paid out because it was not used in accordance with the applicable rules and regulations, and not a measure of fraud or of inefficiency or waste; regrets that the general estimate of the level of error in the Union budget gives each year a bad opinion to citizens on the managemùent of EU funds even more before European elections;
Amendment 81 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 22
Paragraph 22
22. Recalls that the Court’s audit effortbased on international audit standards are focused only on the year under review and cannot take account of the lifecycle of Union programmes and funds covering multiple years, as well as corrections and recoveries after the end of the year under review;
Amendment 82 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 23
Paragraph 23
Amendment 85 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 24
Paragraph 24
24. Considers that both approaches serve different purposes and have their benefits, disadvantages, strengths, and weaknesses, and should be used to complement each other while understanding the differences and particularities, such as the different concepts of error and the risk categorisation used by each institution; commends the Commission’s approach for its sheer size and the resulting granularity in identifying where additional efforts are most beneficial and where improvements are needed; considers the Court’s error rate to be an important indicator of compliance with legality and regularity of the implementation of the Union budget; welcomes in this regard the Court’s findings, observations and recommendations as a very useful contribution to the further improvement of the budget management and implementation under different management modes and by all relevant stakeholders;
Amendment 90 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 25
Paragraph 25
25. Notes that, on several issues, the Court’s and Commission’s findings are aligned, most notably concerning the main sources of irregularities in ‘Cohesion’, and the higher risks for market measures and rural development in ‘Natural resources and environment’; notes that specifically in ‘Cohesion’ some cases of eligibility errors identified and quantified by the Court do not allow the Commission to qualify the error as an irregularity to be corrected in line with the definition laid down in Article 2(36) of Regulation (EU) No 1060/2021 (‘the Common Provisions Regulation’ or CPR)2 and thus, the Commission cannot pursue financial correction procedures, and such errors would not enter into the Commission’s estimate of risk at payment; _________________ 2 OJ L 231 30.6.2021, p. 159
Amendment 96 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 29
Paragraph 29
29. Notes that the total outstanding commitments reached an all-time high of EUR 450 billion in 2022, caused by both increased commitments related to NGEU (with all National Recovery and Resilience Plans adopted in 2022) and the start of the implementation of the 2021-2027 programming period; notes that the Commission expects this amount to further increase in 2023, and foresees a decrease from 2024 to 2027 when committed amounts for both NGEU and the 2021- 2027 programming period should be paid out; regrets the lack of initiatives taken by the Commission, in conjunction with the Member States, to increase the absorption capacity of the programs and thus bring about a sharp and lasting reduction in outstanding commitments;
Amendment 111 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 36 – point ii
Paragraph 36 – point ii
(ii) continue to simplify rules and procedures without compromising the quality of the controls; and continue to digitalize audit procedures;
Amendment 114 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 36 – point iv
Paragraph 36 – point iv
(iv) continue to support the administrative capacity of Member States’ authorities; identify ways to help member states accelerate the use of EU funds, notably in shared management funds under the Common Provisions Regulation;
Amendment 120 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 36 – point vi
Paragraph 36 – point vi
(vi) continue monitoring the possible risk of corruption and fraud across all funds, using feedback from investigations by the EPPO and OLAF; and encourage the systematic use of Archane and EDES databases systems;
Amendment 122 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 36 – point vi a (new)
Paragraph 36 – point vi a (new)
(vi a) assess the impact on the EU budget of high inflation continuing over several years and identify tools to mitigate resulting key risks;
Amendment 123 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 39
Paragraph 39
39. Considers the overview of special reports, which spans the largest part of chapter three of the Court’s Annual report, gives a good overview of reports presented by the Court that relate to 2022 strategic areas but is limited and incomplete in terms of the content of those reports and the replies provided by the auditees; considers that an; a deep analysis of the performance of the Union budget requires more than acould be an added value to the follow-up of the auditor recommendations, despite their undeniable value in terms of budgetary control; notes the issue of timing concerning to the publication of the AMPR;
Amendment 128 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 47 a (new)
Paragraph 47 a (new)
47 a. Calls the Commision to conduct a deep analysis of all amounts recovered on the basis of EPPO notfications and to inform the discharge authority about the results; recalls that Commission plays the primary role in the follow up and recovery of damages to the EU budget, following EPPO notifications. Regrets that EPPO until now is not aware of the mechanisms set up by the Commission to that effect; notes that the issue of EPPO notifications has been raised in the Annual Meetings on the implementation of the Commission; welcomes the EPPO Working Arrangement and the set up of a working group to ensure that EPPO notifications will enable the Commission to maximize recovery to the EU budget;
Amendment 137 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 58 a (new)
Paragraph 58 a (new)
58 a. Stresses the importance to have transparent and clear rules applied to the selection procedure and to the public procurement procedures in all executive agencies; regrets the rise of complaints of reaserchers for non transparency notably for the Research Excutive Agency; recalls that under the 2021-2027 EU long-term budget, the REA manages several EU programmes and support services; calls for Commission to conduct an assessment of all procedures and an ex-post evaluation of the added value of all their executive agencies in accordance with Art 3 .1 of the Council Regulation (EC No 58/2003 of 19 December 2002 laying down the statute for executive agencies to be entrusted with certain tasks in the management of Community programmes (Official Journal L 011 , 16/01/2003 P. 0001 – 0008));
Amendment 154 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 74
Paragraph 74
74. Notes that in the annual activity reports, the Commission reports error rates, for each programme and overall for the funds, that strictly refer to irregularities leading to financial corrections; notes that to impose financial corrections, the Commission needs to conclude that an irregularity within the meaning of the Article 2(36) of the CPR has occurred, while not all formal breaches and errors included by the Court as quantifiable errors in its estimated error rate lead to ineligible expenditure because they do not qualify as an irregularity as defined in Article 2(36) of the CPR;
Amendment 156 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 75
Paragraph 75
Amendment 166 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 80
Paragraph 80
80. Notes thatUrges the Commission is closely monitoringto monitor closely the situation, in particular when RRF national coordinating authorities are the same as for cohesion policy funds, and insisted on having sufficient additional administrative capacity and human resources allocated to the different strands of Union funding;
Amendment 168 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 81
Paragraph 81
81. Welcomes that for the moment neither the Court nor the Commission identify any cases where the obligatory national co-funding of a cohesion project was paid for by RRF funds in the 2022 RRF disbursements;
Amendment 170 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 82
Paragraph 82
82. Notes that the Court considers that the Commission’s desk reviews and compliance audits have inherent limitations in confirming the validity of the residual total error rates reported by audit authorities; takes note ofcalls on the Commission’s reply that its assessment, based on a combination of desk and on- the-spot audit work covering the different individual programmes and assurance packages, enables it to establish a reasonable and fair estimate of the error rates for each programme, every year, and cumulatively for cohesion policy funds;
Amendment 174 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 83
Paragraph 83
83. Notes with concern the Court’s finding that the proportion of assurance packages with residual error rates of above 2 % reached a peak of 61 % of the expenditure in the Court’s sample in 2022 compared to 39 % in the previous year, reflecting the persistent shortcomings in the work of the audit authorities; stresses with concern that the Court’s audit results over the last six years demonstrate that the controls currently in place do not yet sufficiently offset the high inherent risk of error in cohesion, and that managing authorities do not always effectively prevent or detect irregularities in expenditure declared by beneficiaries; notes with concern that the errors found by the Court represent significant weaknesses in the audit authorities’ work on verifying the eligibility of expenditures and projects, and the compliance with internal market rules; notes that a part of the residual error rates recalculated by the Court above 2 % in the audited assurance packages are attributable to the aforementioned divergences;
Amendment 176 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 84
Paragraph 84
84. Is concerned about the persistent shortcomings observed by the Court in the national audits, which can be due to inadequate scope, unclear documentation of audits and sample filtering performed by national audit authorities, as well as resource issues, including inadequate funding and a lack of a skilled workforce within national audit authorities; recalls the recommendations in the INI report 2022/2020 on possibilities to increase the reliability of audits and controls by national authorities in shared management; notes that the Commission considers the work of the majority of the audit authorities to be reliable and that only 7 out of 81 audit authorities need serious improvements;
Amendment 193 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 89 – point iv
Paragraph 89 – point iv
(iv) continue the implementation of its targeted 4th revision of the“action plan on public procurement” in cooperation with Member States to help programme authorities and contracting authorities to improve their practices in the area of public procurement, including how to avoid the most common errors in public procurement linked to the management of the ESI Funds, as well as targeted training sessions for Member States’ officials;
Amendment 195 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 89 – point v
Paragraph 89 – point v
(v) further enhance simplification in the implementation of cohesion programmes and work closely with Member States to identify best practices regarding the digitalisation of practices and procedures; furthermore encourages the Commission to implement tools for digitalisation of public procurement based on the the model of e.procurement , and to help Members states in this transition;
Amendment 208 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 97
Paragraph 97
97. WelcomNotes the Commission’s statement that the 2023-2027 CAP delivery model aims to simplify rules and to emphasise the use of new technologies, such as the Area Monitoring System, that will help reduce errors; notes that, together with errors made by the farmers, the Land Parcel Identification System (LPIS) is the basis for the geospatial aid application and recalls the significant potential benefits of technologies for monitoring area aid for farmers, administrations and the environment;
Amendment 209 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 98
Paragraph 98
Amendment 212 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 101
Paragraph 101
101. Welcomes the increased interest in andRegrets the fact that the use of the integrated IT tool for data mining ARACHNE by the Member States, with 13 Member States using the tool for at least some measures, and five Member States participating in a general introduction workshop on ARACHNEis not compulsory; notes the obstacles reported by Member States and the continued efforts ofasks the Commission to improve ARACHNE;
Amendment 227 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 114
Paragraph 114
114. Welcomes that the participation of SMEs in the EDF (European Defence Fund) (in particular the cross- border participation of SMEs in industrial consortia) is being facilitated through targeted EDF calls, financial bonuses, specific award criteria, and the use of SCOs to decrease the administrative burden; notes that in the 2022 EDF calls, 38,2 % of the participating entities were SMEs, and 20 % of the total funding available through these calls will be for SMEs (EUR 166 million);
Amendment 259 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 130 – point ii
Paragraph 130 – point ii
(ii) continue ensuring that all contracts involving Union funding fully respect applicable UE values, Union legislation, including accountability, transparency and protection of Union funds; make the participation of entities, NGOs,individuals or groups affiliated with terrorist organisations or promoting hate speech and discrimination categorically incompatible with any Union funding; and ensure that strict monitoring and ex ante and ex post control mechanisms make sure that all individuals involved in Union funded actions exclusively pursue the EU objectives and activities approved for Union funding;
Amendment 261 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 130 – point iii
Paragraph 130 – point iii
(iii) put in place adequate ex ante and ex post control measures in unstable or conflict zones to ensure the proper control of spending of Union funds and ways to recover the EU funds;
Amendment 300 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 156
Paragraph 156
156. WelcomNotes the systematiceffort made in the audit work of the Court regarding the RRF, with emphasis on the protection of the Union’s financial interests, which is providing a thorough analysis of the relevant aspects of the Facility and valuable insight into its implementation; notes with satisfaction that the Commission broadly accepts and applies the Court’s recommendations and acknowledges that many of the issues identified by the Court are related to the legal basis of the RRF and linked to its innovative nature and functioning; considers that the Court’s recommendations stemming from its audit work on the RRF are particularly relevant to the co-legislators for future Union performance-based financing instruments;
Amendment 306 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 158
Paragraph 158
158. WelcomNotes that, based on the Court’s recommendations and the experience gained, the Commission presented its methodologies on (i) assessing the satisfactory fulfilment of M&Ts, (ii) calculating the suspended amounts in case of non-fulfilment of a milestone or target, and (iii) dealing with potential situations where M&Ts initially assessed as satisfactorily fulfilled by the Commission were subsequently reversed by the Member State; welcomeregrets that the Ccommission accepts the recommendation to carry out a revision of its ex-post audit procedures to verify thedoes not foresee any post-2026 monitoring on potential reversals of targets after the payment,milestones or targets although is concerned that the methodology does not provide legal clarity in case a milestone or target is reversed after the implementation period of the RRF;
Amendment 355 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 171 – point i a (new)
Paragraph 171 – point i a (new)
(i a) work in close cooperation with the discharge authority as co legislator to reform the RRF regulation by providing a methodology to monitor potential reversals of milestones or targets 2 years after the end of the implementation;