32 Amendments of Monica MACOVEI related to 2010/2142(DEC)
Amendment 1 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 1
Paragraph 1
1. Notes that, in the Court of Auditors report on the implementation of the budget for the financial year 2009, the Court states that ‘the payments for the year ended 31 December 2009 for External aid, Development and Enlargement were affected by material error and’; is concerned about the fact that the errors concernare related to eligibility and irregularities in procurement procedures, which are the areas most vulnerable to mismanagement and fraud;
Amendment 4 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 5 a (new)
Paragraph 5 a (new)
5a. Welcomes the fact that the Commission has spent EUR 396 000 000 between 2007 and 2010 to support accession candidate countries in their efforts to improve judicial systems and the fight against corruption as well as the progress made in this regard; nevertheless cautions against being too optimistic and asks the Commission to provide evidence that this money was spent efficiently and state whether improved control structures actually lead to increased sanctions against corrupt actors, including in high-profile cases, whether laws are fully implemented and whether reforms are sustained;
Amendment 5 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 5 b (new)
Paragraph 5 b (new)
5b. Takes note of the increasing use of joint management in the Food Facility and invites DG ECHO to report on its experience with the implementation of the Food Facility in its annual activity report for 2010;
Amendment 42 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital S a (new)
Recital S a (new)
Sa. Whereas various measures decided in 2008, such as the EUR 1 000 000 000 Food Facility, the speeding-up of payments of the Structural Funds through the European Economic Recovery Plan and the extension of the eligibility period for various programmes into 2009 presented a challenge for budgetary control in 2009 and beyond;
Amendment 52 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 3
Paragraph 3
3. Notes that in the present understanding of ‘shared management’ most of the management functions are carried out by national bodies not directly accountable at Union level and over which the Commission has nonly very limited authority;
Amendment 75 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 11
Paragraph 11
Amendment 84 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 17
Paragraph 17
17. Notes thatWelcomes the Court of Auditors concludes that reliable annual information about the overall effects of corrective mechanisms is not available, partly because' finding that the Commission presents complete information on its recoveries and financial corrections; deplores, on the other hand, the fact that the Commission does not always receive complete and reliable information from the Member States;
Amendment 86 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 18
Paragraph 18
18. Invites the Member States to improve their systems for reporting corrections to the Commission, and the Commission to refine the financial reporting guidelines to ensure that all relevant information about the operation of the multi-annual correction mechanisms is appropriately disclosed in the accounts; further asks the Commission to keep Parliament informed on its efforts to verify the work of the national audit authorities;
Amendment 88 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 19
Paragraph 19
19. Believes that unspent Union funds should not be returned to the Member States if a Member State has not paid back to the Union amounts incorrectly received and invites the Commission to take into account anythe Commission has to increase its implementation rate for recoveries and asks the Court of Auditors to carefully scrutinise the figures presented in the accounts for 2010 in this respect; asks the Commission to provide further suggestions on how to deal with financial corrections not yet paid by the Member States before returning unspent annual budget appropriations to the Member States; further asks the Commission to produce concrete proposals regarding the tools to increase recoveries from the final beneficiary including suspension of payments and changes to the legal framework;
Amendment 95 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 20
Paragraph 20
20. Notes that under the present system, which does not include fines and makes it possible to substitute most of the expenditure found to be ineligible by the Commission or the Court of Auditors, the Member States seem to have limited interest in developing efficient control systems that could result in a reduction of their share of Union spending, therefore repeats its opinion from the 2008 discharge, that reallocation of ineligible expenditure should only be allowed if it was discovered by the Member States themselves; further welcomes that the Commission has made use of the new possibility to immediately suspend payments and demands that suspension of payments continue to be used resolutely and consistently, making the decisions taken and the reasons for them clear to Parliament;
Amendment 97 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 20 a (new)
Paragraph 20 a (new)
20a. Is aware of the fact that suspension of payments can sometimes create a trade- off with quick implementation, but is convinced that in cases where high risk is already established, reliability should take precedence over speed;
Amendment 102 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 23
Paragraph 23
23. Notes with concern the slow pace of improvements to the financial management of Union funds; recalls that recovery orders made againstat the same time takes note of the repeated opinions of both the Court of Auditors and the Commission that the quality of management and control systems differs widely between the Member States cand be an indicator of financial management performancetween the different programmes; calls on the Commission to systematically account for these differences in control systems and to make clear evaluations available of efforts by the Member States to detect irregularities so as to make sure that those Member States detecting higher irregularities due to more onerous control systems are not discredited at any point;
Amendment 103 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 23 a (new)
Paragraph 23 a (new)
23a. Stresses that Parliament and Union citizens are ultimately interested in the residual error after closure (and therefore the money finally lost); urges the Court of Auditors and the Commission to use the closure of the 2000-2006 period to improve and reconcile the information on the relationship between the annual error rates reported in the present declaration of assurance (DAS) and the corrections made by the Commission and to make concrete proposals in this respect; asks the Court of Auditors to scrutinise the European Regional Development Fund closure audit for the 1994-1999 period reported in the Annual Activity Report of 2009 in this respect;
Amendment 104 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 23 b (new)
Paragraph 23 b (new)
23b. Agrees with the recommendation of the Council that information on recoveries, financial corrections and suspensions should be easily accessible to the public;
Amendment 135 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 38
Paragraph 38
Amendment 153 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 45
Paragraph 45
45. Notes the Court of Justice's decision in the combined cases of Volker and Markus Schecke (C93 and 93/09); stresses the validity of the principle of transparency under Article 30(3) of the Financial Regulation and calls on the Commission to swiftly propose substitutes to the provisions which were held invalid by the Court of Justice either in the Financial Regulation, sectoral legislation or any other act; invites the Commission to monitor the Member States' obligation to publish the data and make sure that is done in a comparable and searchable format and in at least one of the working languages of the Union;
Amendment 183 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 62 a (new)
Paragraph 62 a (new)
62a. agrees with the Court of Auditors that the conformity clearance puts too much emphasis on flat-rate corrections and conformity adjustments that do not concern the final beneficiary;
Amendment 197 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 68
Paragraph 68
68. Further notes that diversity of interests will, without doubt, have an influence on the effective implementation of the Member States' control obligations in so far as Union expenditure returns, at the same time,within the respective Member State and national contributions to the Union budget from the respective Member State are concerned;
Amendment 199 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 68 a (new)
Paragraph 68 a (new)
68a. Welcomes, in this regard, the Commission’s Green Paper on the modernisation of EU public procurement policy - Towards a more efficient European Procurement Market; calls on Council and the Commission to finalise the adoption of the reform of the basic Union public procurement rules (Directives 2004/17/EC1 and 2004/18/EC2) by 2012; ____________ 1 OJ L 134, 30.4.2004, p. 1. 2 OJ L 134, 30.4.2004, p. 114.
Amendment 215 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 84
Paragraph 84
84. Notes that the main source of error in this policy group remains the reimbursement of overstated personnel and indirect costs to research projects; further takes note of the increase in reservations concerning direct management (from 4 to 9) mainly as a result of complex eligibility criteria;
Amendment 225 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 88 a (new)
Paragraph 88 a (new)
88a. Welcomes the fact that the Commission has started to make use of its sanctions in the area of research (34 actions, EUR 514 330 received), nevertheless, supports the IAS conclusion that a strong fraud detection mechanism is needed;
Amendment 228 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 91
Paragraph 91
91. Recalls that the majority of the expenditure in this policy area is subject to direct centralised management by Commission services either from Commission Headquarters or at the Union Delegations level (‘European Union Delegations’ after the entry into force of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union); further takes note of the increasing use of joint management in, for example, the Food Facility;
Amendment 237 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 97
Paragraph 97
97. Invites DG ECHO to improve the assessments of proposals' documentation for humanitarian aid actions (such as the introduction of standardised evaluation reports) and to report on its experience with the implementation of the Food Facility in its Annual Activity Report for 2010;
Amendment 239 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 97 a (new)
Paragraph 97 a (new)
97a. Welcomes the fact that the Commission spent EUR 396 000 000 between 2007 and 2010 to support accession candidates in their efforts to improve judicial systems and the fight against corruption as well as the progress made in this regard; nevertheless cautions against being too optimistic and asks the Commission to provide evidence that this money was spent efficiently and whether improved control structures actually lead to increased sanctions against corrupt actors, including in high-profile cases, whether laws are fully implemented, and whether reforms are sustained;
Amendment 240 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 97 b (new)
Paragraph 97 b (new)
97b. Notes with concern the weaknesses identified by the Court of Auditors in the decentralised implementation system (DIS) in Croatia and Turkey; asks the Commission to report on all measures taken to address this problem and provide estimates of the amount of expenditure at risk;
Amendment 241 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 97 c (new)
Paragraph 97 c (new)
97c. Asks the Commission, and in particular DG ELARG, to step up its efforts to deal with the final declarations for the PHARE programme, the CARDS programme, and the transition facility and to proceed with the closure of these programmes prudently and in a timely manner;
Amendment 242 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 97 d (new)
Paragraph 97 d (new)
97d. Regrets the fact that a significant share of pre-accession aid is dealt with in chapters 3 (agriculture - EUR 254 000 000) and 4 (cohesion - EUR 65 000 000) of the Court of Auditors' annual report; is surprised that, unlike in previous years, the Court of Auditors' annual report does not contain information on audit visits per country for non-Union countries;
Amendment 243 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 97 e (new)
Paragraph 97 e (new)
97e. Regrets the fact that DG REGIO did not undertake any audit missions to Croatia in 2009 despite there being major problems with the tendering process there;
Amendment 244 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 99 a (new)
Paragraph 99 a (new)
99a. Asks the Court of Auditors to provide reasons why its transaction sampling for the external aid chapter delivered a comparably low error rate (13 %), a big share of non-quantifiable errors at the level of the Union Delegations and no evidence of accuracy or occurrence errors in an area that is, by its nature, at high risk of misuse of funds; asks the Commission, and in particular the Union Delegations, to provide a clear audit trail and all other information necessary to facilitate the Court of Auditors' analysis;
Amendment 293 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 125
Paragraph 125
Amendment 302 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 128 – indent 2 a (new)
Paragraph 128 – indent 2 a (new)
- an action plan on how to better integrate and reconcile the Court of Auditors' findings on annual error rates at the beneficiary level and the Commission's work on the follow-up of those findings as well as the financial corrections and recoveries made over the whole life-cycle of the different programmes up to the closure procedure and including the identification of payments that may be subject to further verification and clearance of accounts procedures and a better follow-up of the Member States' recovery efforts;
Amendment 303 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 129
Paragraph 129
129. Invites the Commission to appoint a ‘performance evaluator’ withestablish clear responsibility and ownership for the preparation of the evaluation report required in accordance with Article 318 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union to be endorsed by the College of Commissioners in order to establish a clear ‘ownership’ of thisand to make sure that this report is fully integrated into the Commission's existing evaluation efforts, the performance measurements that are part of the activity-based management cycle, the internal audits, and the Court of Auditors' performance audit in the special reports;