Activities of Inés AYALA SENDER related to 2014/2081(DEC)
Shadow reports (1)
REPORT on discharge in respect of the implementation of the general budget of the European Union for the financial year 2013, Section V – Court of Auditors PDF (149 KB) DOC (78 KB)
Amendments (17)
Amendment 2 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 5
Paragraph 5
5. Takes note of the Court of Auditors’ new strategy for 2013-2017 to maximise its role as the external auditor of the Union; endorses the plan established for 2013 and reminds the Court of Auditors of the needits intention to improve the quantity and quality of the performance audit reports, rather than by enhancing efficiency and the resources earmarked for them; takes note, furthermore, of the 60% increase in the quantnumber of such reports since 2008, and insists that quantity should not come at the expense of quality;
Amendment 6 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 5 a (new)
Paragraph 5 a (new)
5a. Welcomes the Court’s internal reform programme which is included in its strategy for 2013-2017 and based on the 2014 peer report, Parliament’s report on the future of the Court and the Court’s own internal analysis; calls on the Court to report to Parliament regularly on the development and implementation of the reform;
Amendment 7 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 6
Paragraph 6
6. Believes that a certain degree of flexibility in the Court of Auditors’ work programme is needed to ensure that it swiftly adapts to relunexpected major evaent unexpected issuess that may require specific auditing or attention, and is able to disregard items on the programme that arequire appropriate auditing no longer relevant; also considers it important that the Court should achieve a certain level of diversification and balance, rather than concentrating to much and too often on certain areas of activity; draws the Court of Auditors’ attention to the political priorities of the legislators and the issues of major interest to Union citizens as communicated by Parliament’s Committee on Budgetary Control;
Amendment 9 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 8
Paragraph 8
8. Reminds the Court of Auditors of the need to improve time plans, in particular in the case of the Court of Auditors’ Special Reports, without compromising the quality of those reports; regrets that the timeliness of the audit findings continue to be far from the long-term target; recommends the Court of Auditors to set the objective of reducing the duration of every phase of the performance audit plan;
Amendment 10 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 8 a (new)
Paragraph 8 a (new)
8a. Notes that the Court of Auditors’ methodology must be consistent and applied to all areas of management; understands that further alignment could lead to inconsistencies in the Court of Auditors’ definitions of illegal transactions in direct and shared management;
Amendment 11 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 10
Paragraph 10
10. Finds that the Special Reports’ recommendations should be clearer and consistently disclose the positive and the negative conducts of the concerned countries; takes the view that the Court should not lose sight of its European remit and added value, and that one of the aims of its reports is to identify problems and shortcomings as well as achievements, but that the ultimate purpose of its work should never be to name and shame Member States; hopes that reform of the Court will result in strategies and instruments that make it possible to propose positive incentives (i.e. carrots as well as sticks);
Amendment 12 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 10 a (new)
Paragraph 10 a (new)
10a. Welcomes the fact that, as part of the performance review, the Court has included a new indicator to measure its media presence and impact, with the strategic objective of raising awareness of the ECA, its products, and the findings and conclusions of its audits; takes the view, nevertheless, that in addition to these useful performance indicators, the Court should step up and fine-tune its information policy, above all in terms of quality, objectivity and preventing effects that feed eurosceptic, europhobic and populist attitudes;
Amendment 13 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 10 b (new)
Paragraph 10 b (new)
10b. Notes that the latest changes to Parliament’s Rules of Procedure geared towards increasing the involvement of the parliamentary committees in different areas as regards special reports have not lived up to all the expectations; undertakes to look into ways of improving the parliamentary procedures that apply to special reports from the Court;
Amendment 15 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 12
Paragraph 12
12. Considers the selection procedure for Takes note of Court of Auditors Decision 34/2014, which establishes that the selection and recruitment of non- permanent officials to be unclear and invites the Court of Auditors to clarify the methods used in recruitmentstaff should be governed exclusively by the Staff Regulations of Officials and the Conditions of Employment of Other Servants of the European Union, except in the case of staff in the Members’ private offices and the Secretary-General, as with the other institutions;
Amendment 16 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 13
Paragraph 13
13. Points out that some Member States are over-represented at managerial level, while the Member States which acceded the Union in the last 10 years are still under-represented at Head of Unit and Director level; reiterates the need for a greater geographical balance at all levels of the administrationNotes that the Court states that it does not take geographical criteria into account in appointing staff to management posts; in this connection, calls on the Court to do what is necessary to remedy, in future, the current major imbalance at the Court, especially as regards management posts;
Amendment 18 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 13 a (new)
Paragraph 13 a (new)
13a. Regrets that the equal opportunities plan launched by the Court in 2012 to guarantee gender balance has not delivered as expected, especially where management posts are concerned; notes that among 70 management and head of unit posts, only 21 are occupied by women, and that, furthermore, the majority of these posts are in the translation and administration directorates; highlights and welcomes the increase in the number of female auditors, which will doubtless have an effect on the number of women in management posts in auditing; takes note of the Court’s commitment to act quickly to review the equality plan with a view to identifying effective solutions that make it possible to attain the targets set in this area as soon as possible;
Amendment 20 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 16
Paragraph 16
16. Takes note of the substantial pricing variation of translation cost per language (with variations of up to more than EUR 100 per page, depending on the language) at the Court; is of the opinion that such a high discrepancy ofin costs, even including indirect costs, should be better aligned; calls on the Court of Auditors to analyse possible ways to reduce translation costs and to continue promoting the use of new generation technological tools for translation purposesanalysed and corrected;
Amendment 21 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 16 a (new)
Paragraph 16 a (new)
16a. Notes with concern the enormous disparities in translation costs among the various European institutions; calls, therefore, on the Interinstitutional Working Party on Translation to identify the causes of those disparities and put forward solutions that will put an end to the imbalance and harmonise translation costs whilst ensuring full respect for quality and linguistic diversity; with this in mind, the working party shall relaunch cooperation among the institutions in order to share best practice and outcomes and to identify areas in which cooperation or agreements between institutions can be strengthened; the working party shall also aim to establish a unified methodology for the presentation of translation costs which all the institutions can use, in order to make it simpler to analyse and compare the costs; the working party shall present those findings before the end of 2015; calls on all the institutions to play an active role in the work of the interinstitutional working party; recalls in this regard the fundamental importance of respect for multilingualism in the European institutions in order to guarantee all EU citizens equal treatment and equal opportunities;
Amendment 23 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 16 b (new)
Paragraph 16 b (new)
16b. Considers that at a time of crisis and budgetary cuts in general, the cost of away days for staff at the EU institutions has to be reduced and that they should take place, where possible, on the institutions’ own premises, as the added value derived from away days does not justify such high costs;
Amendment 25 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 17
Paragraph 17
17. InvitesRecognises that the Court of Auditors tohas made improvements with regard to defining and clarifying the competences and responsibilities of the Chamber for coordination, evaluation, assurance and development; calls on the Court to press ahead with these efforts and asks to be informed of the measures taken to improve the Chamber’s performance;
Amendment 29 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 24
Paragraph 24
24. Welcomes the cooperation between the Court of Auditors and Parliament’s Committee on Budgetary Control and welcomes regular feedback on the basis of Parliament’s demands; calls on the Court to include in its annual activity report a specific section on the action it has taken in response to Parliament’s discharge recommendations concerning the European Court of Auditors for the previous financial year, as most of the other institutions do;
Amendment 33 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 25
Paragraph 25
25. Calls on the Court of Auditors to examine the possibility of advancing the presentation of its annual report. where this enables it to comply with the time limits and requirements laid down in the Financial Regulation; points out that the current timetable, which is also largely dependent on the Commission’s timetable, not only respects those time limits and requirements but also fits in with the timetable for the discharge procedure in the European Parliament as laid down in the Financial Regulation (15 May of year N+2);