31 Amendments of Markus PIEPER related to 2012/2167(DEC)
Amendment 10 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 1 – introductory part
Paragraph 1 – introductory part
1. Calls on the Commission, with a view to granting of the discharge, to present to Parliament an action plan for the achievement of the following priority actions:
Amendment 12 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 1 – point a
Paragraph 1 – point a
(a) The Commission should annually adopt a communication to the European Parliament, the Council and the Court of Auditors with a view to making public all the amounts (in nominal terms) recovered in the course of the preceding year through financial corrections and recoveries for all management modes at the level of the Union and by Member States; the Commission should demonstrate to the greatest possible extent that the financial corrections adequately compensated for errors made, and that they contributed to lasting improvements of the management and control systems;
Amendment 23 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 1 – point c e (new)
Paragraph 1 – point c e (new)
(ce) Calls on the Commission to demand greater accountability from national audit authorities and audit systems in the case of Member States where the most frequent errors occur recurrently; calls on the Commission to provide an action plan with proposals as to how the authorisation and work of audit bodies in these Member States can be improved and where it must itself take more responsibility in the event of persistent deficits; calls for the relevant fund regulations to be amended accordingly in connection with the review of the Multiannual Financial Framework;
Amendment 39 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 1 – point q a (new)
Paragraph 1 – point q a (new)
(qa) Calls, in the case of Member States which manifestly breach EU provisions on budgetary and competition law (particularly with regard to the award of public contracts), for more stringent monitoring and conditions; calls, where EU law is breached, for automatic suspension of payments for the relevant Structural Fund programmes until rules are complied with, so that use of the funds in accordance with EU rules is guaranteed;
Amendment 40 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 1 – point q b (new)
Paragraph 1 – point q b (new)
(qb) Calls for a tougher suspension policy for the ERDF and Cohesion Fund, like that already successfully applied to European Social Fund payments, thus enabling early action to prevent any improper use of Structural Fund monies and underpinning, from the outset, the zero-tolerance approach by the Commission;
Amendment 48 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 1 – point v b (new)
Paragraph 1 – point v b (new)
(vb) Calls on the Commission, until the review by early 2014 of the various fields of policy and programmes, to propose a clear definition of European added value; calls for a review of the programmes with the aim of avoiding national and regional displacement effects and genuinely only financing measures which could not be carried out without impetus from Europe;
Amendment 59 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 4
Paragraph 4
Amendment 64 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 11 a (new)
Paragraph 11 a (new)
11a. Calls for publication of the annual summary in at least one other widely spoken language of the European Union;
Amendment 67 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 15
Paragraph 15
15. Points out that the Court establishes, on the basis of its audits, the most likely error rate, which in 2011 stood at 3,9% for payments, that, overn the years, the institutions arrived at an undebasis of international auditing standards, the Court of Auditors tanding thatkes 2% as the materiality threshold for, viz. the generally acceptable rate of errors is 2%, and that, if the most likely error rate is above this threshold, the Court will give an adverse opinion;
Amendment 80 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 27 a (new)
Paragraph 27 a (new)
27a. Calls on the Court of Auditors to gear its special reports on specific fields of policy more than previously to facilitating comparisons with past periods;
Amendment 85 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 28 a (new)
Paragraph 28 a (new)
28a. Stresses in this context that the Commission should also shoulder its responsibility; calls therefore for the Commission to certify the audit bodies in the Member States, which system should be introduced, at the latest, when the Financial Regulation and the regulations on the Structural Funds are revised;
Amendment 86 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 28 b (new)
Paragraph 28 b (new)
28b. Calls on the Commission to do more to carry out its role of monitoring the administrative and supervisory authorities of the Member States and to publish annual assessments, broken down by Member State;
Amendment 92 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 34
Paragraph 34
34. Welcomes the fact that Member States may, at the appropriate level, publish information as referred to in paragraph 32, and – in addition – provide declarations signed at an appropriate level based on that information; calls on the Commission to assist the Member States in providing those voluntary management declarations as referred to in Article 59(5) of the new Financial Regulation (EU, Euratom) No 966/2012 by promoting best practices and rewarding those who follow such practices; insists that Parliament should receive both the management declarations and the voluntary declarations; calls for these declarations to be submitted in at least one other widely spoken language of the Union;
Amendment 112 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 40
Paragraph 40
40. Is worriedObserves that the total number of reservations included by the Directors- General of the Commission in their annual activity reports increased to 27 in 2011 from 17 in 2010, and that the estimated total financial impact of reservations increased to EUR 1 959 million or 1,5 % of the payments made in 2011(2010: EUR 423 million, corresponding to 0,3. %);
Amendment 117 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 46
Paragraph 46
46. Expects to receive as soon as possible the report by the Commission on financial corrections at closure 2000-2006 in 1 See the Court's 2011 Ann, including the amount actually report, Annex1.2, point 2. covered which was returned to the budget, at closure 2000-2006 in Regional policy which shows the impact of the financial corrections made during the programming period and at closure on the overall error rate of the 2000-2006 programming period ;
Amendment 119 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 51
Paragraph 51
51. Calls on the Commission to issue annual communications to Parliament, the Council and the Court of Auditors listing, by country and programme, financial corrections and recoveries collected, in order to demonstrate its performance in the protection of the Union's budget; calls on the Commission, on this basis, to draw up a performance ranking;
Amendment 124 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 59
Paragraph 59
59. Is particularly worried by the fact that in 62% of the audited regional policy transactions affected by error, and in 76% of the ESF audited transactions, sufficient information was available for the Member State authorities to have detected and corrected at least some of these errors before claiming reimbursement from the Commission, and that in rural development, the Court of Auditors found that on-the-spot checks had not always been carried out properly; therefore calls on the Member States and the Commission to urgently reinforce first-level checks and shoulder more responsibility for the audit systems of the Member States which have attracted attention; calls for corresponding amendments to the relevant fund regulations as part of the review of the Multiannual Financial Framework;
Amendment 131 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 64 a (new)
Paragraph 64 a (new)
64a. Calls on the Commission, where breaches of budgetary and competition law are known to have occurred in the Member States (particularly in the award of public contracts), to apply more stringent monitoring and conditions and, in case of doubt, to suspend financing from the Structural Funds immediately until compliance with the rules and hence a use of the funds which accords with EU law are guaranteed;
Amendment 134 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 66
Paragraph 66
66. Once again requests the Commission to name the Member States responsible for the cumulative quantifiable errors identified; understandsrejects the argument that the constraints imposed on the Court of Auditors by its statistical sample method, which effectively prevents the Court from naming Member States with the highest error rate; encouragesagain calls on the Court to compare its audit findings with those of the Commission in order to identify those Member States or regions most affected by the level and/or occurrence of errors;
Amendment 154 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 84
Paragraph 84
84. Deplores the fact that the Commission and the Member States have been unable to ensure timely implementation of the Modernised Customs Code (MCC), which was supposed to become applicable on 24 June 2013 at the latest; stresses that any further delays will impede adequate protection of the Member States' financial interests and, consequently, those of the Union itself; underlines that, according to the Commission, this situation is due, to a considerable extent, to the fact that the Member States cannot agree on the most appropriate IT development methodology and that they are facing limitations in human and financial resources; is concerned that the Commission and the Member States are lagging behind this very important reform in the situation where the collection of own resources is less than satisfactory;
Amendment 159 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 90
Paragraph 90
Amendment 161 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 92
Paragraph 92
Amendment 172 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 111
Paragraph 111
111. DeplorNotes that the Court identifies significant problems concerning the implementation of cross-compliance requirements for the identification and registration of animals12 and calls on the Member States to improve the spreadquality of checks throughout the year so that all relevant requirements are properly checkedwithout imposing an additional administrative load on the beneficiaries;
Amendment 178 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 122 a (new)
Paragraph 122 a (new)
122 a. Regrets the fact that, according to the 2011 Annual Activity Report of DG REGIO, the countries with the highest risk of incorrect payments for the 2007- 2013 programming period are the Czech Republic (11.4%), Romania (11.2%) and Italy (8.6%);
Amendment 203 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 134 a (new)
Paragraph 134 a (new)
134a. Whenever there is information concerning considerable, long-term deficiencies in the proper application of EU legislation in a Member State or serious flaws in the operation of management and control systems, the Commission should interrupt payments to the Member State concerned in order to prevent major damage to the EU’s financial interests. Such measures should remain in place until the necessary remedial actions have been ensured by the Member State concerned. If the deficiencies in the management and control system of a Member State are continuous and widespread and do not comply with EU rules at all, the Commission should impose a total interruption of funding to the Member State concerned.
Amendment 271 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 190 a (new)
Paragraph 190 a (new)
190a. Reminds the Commission of the rules concerning the rotation of senior staff in the Commission administration; confirms the need for these requirements in order to create transparency and avoid taking information hostage; calls on the Commission to implement this principle across the board and underlines the importance of leading by example and the taking of responsibility at the highest levels;
Amendment 272 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 197 a (new)
Paragraph 197 a (new)
197a. Notes that Eurostat again failed to deal properly with sensitive information, for example in the case of the data on Greece; calls on the Commission to undertake more stringent quality reviews and ensure that Eurostat guarantees that it will be accurate in its presentation of statistical data; calls for a report on this matter to be produced by March 2014;
Amendment 275 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 204 – indent 3
Paragraph 204 – indent 3
– in time for the 2012 discharge procedure the Commission should report on how it intends to secure European added value of EU spending in accordance with the principles set out by the Court in point 10.31 of its 2011 Annual Report (scale and effects of the expenditure, trans-frontier effects, reasonable concentration and selective approach to expenditure outside the Union) and to develop corresponding, meaningful performance indicators;
Amendment 283 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital D
Recital D
D. whereas the EU Member States are currently negotiating the new Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF) 2014-2020, during which a number of Member States, advocating "better spending", would like to push through cuts in the Union budget; whereas at the same time Member States, amongst them many "friends of better spending", neither shoulder a sufficient degree of responsibility for the implementation of EU funds nor agree to discuss in the Council, in the form of a peer review, the execution of the Union budget and the protection of the Union's financial interests;
Amendment 285 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital K a (new)
Recital K a (new)
Ka. whereas the Committee on Budgetary Control should be more closely involved in monitoring Commission spending in future; looks forward to closer cooperation with the European Court of Auditors in order to produce wide-ranging proposals on improving efficiency in audit procedures;
Amendment 286 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital K b (new)
Recital K b (new)
Kb. whereas the powers and resources of the Committee on Budgetary Control in the discharge procedure should be examined and set out in detail in an own- initiative report;