Activites

• 1995/06/24 Final act published in Official Journal
  • Decision 1995/220
  • OJ L 141 24.06.1995, p. 0051
• 1995/04/05 Debate in Parliament
  • Debate in Parliament
  • T4-0138/1995 summary

    Parliament granted the Commission discharge for the implementation of the general budget of the European Communities for the 1992 financial year with respect to sections I (Parliament), II (Council), III (Commission), IV (Court of Justice) and V (Court of Auditors), but acknowledged that the EAGGF expenditure reported by Member States was still awaiting a final audit and that certain amounts might be corrected. Parliament therefore reserved the right to re-examine expenditure under the guarantee section of the EAGGF once it had received the clearance of the accounts for the 1992 financial year and was in a position to supplement the present discharge decision. Parliament also noted that the Commission had complied with the requests contained in its resolution of 21 April 1994 concerning the recovery of funds from milk quotas, recruitments by the UCLAF (unit for the coordination of fraud prevention) and information on internal tobacco fraud, all of which were conditions for this discharge. At the same time, Parliament set out a series of observations in a resolution annexed to its decision: - with regard to the previous discharge report: Parliament welcomed the fact that the Commission had decided not to apply new retroactive milk quotas for Italy in 1989 and for Italy, Spain and Greece in 1990 and 1991, thereby allowing ECU 1,600 million to be recovered, as requested by the European Parliament. However, it deplored the fact that the Commission had implemented a system, with no legal basis, for buying back milk production from Italy and Spain, generating a loss of some ECU 170 million. It therefore urged the Commission to refrain from implementing such a system until a legal basis had been approved and to examine any decisions against such a legal basis in order to check whether or not they were legal. At the same time, it welcomed the appointment of 50 new positions for UCLAF in 1994 and called on the Commission to ensure that all allegations of fraud were submitted to UCLAF as the independent anti-fraud unit. It also called on the Commission to send it the text of the new rules of procedure for the unit by 30 June 1995; - with regard to certain political questions, it felt that numerous problems highlighted in the resolution resulted mainly from a conflict of interests between the Council and the Commission and that the Commission had frequently opposed the adoption of legislative texts which would have strengthened transparency and the protection of Community taxpayers; - with regard to EAGGF expenditure: it deplored the fact that some Member States had not assisted the Court of Auditors with its inquiries into the tobacco sector and called on the Commission to use all the means at its disposal to recover the sums lost; - with regard to the Structural Funds: it called for the Commission's future annual reports on the implementation of the Funds to include a detailed description of irregularities identified, sums paid in error and adjustments made; - with regard to external policies: it noted that numerous shortcomings had been identified in the three framework research programmes which could invalidate the results of research and therefore proposed a reduction in the period of time between the adoption and implementation of research programmes; - with regard to external relations: it called on the Commission and the EIB to monitor the repayment of loans to eastern European countries and keep it informed; - with regard to financial management, it restated its concern regarding the Commission's financial controller with respect to a posteriori referrals and repeated its request that the Court of Auditors provide a summary annual table of all approvals refused by the financial controller; - finally, with regard to fraud, the European Parliament severely criticized certain national controls and called on the Commission to continue to pressurize Member States into using suitable risk analysis techniques. It therefore called on the Commission to submit, by 30 June 1995, proposals making Union payments to Member States dependent upon the implementation of satisfactory controls, proposals on sanctions against Member States who fail to notify cases of fraud and a report on the problems encountered in recovering sums paid in error.

• 1995/03/21 Vote in committee, 1st reading/single reading
  • A4-0056/1995
• 1994/04/21 Debate in Parliament
  • Debate in Parliament
  • T3-0308/1994
• 1994/04/18 Committee referral announced in Parliament, 1st reading/single reading
• 1994/03/24 Vote in committee, 1st reading/single reading
  • A3-0177/1994
• 1994/03/21 Non-legislative basic document published
  • N3-0147/1994

Documents

• Non-legislative basic document published: N3-0147/1994
• Committee report tabled for plenary, single reading: A3-0177/1994
• Debate in Parliament: Debate in Parliament
• Decision by Parliament, 1st reading/single reading: T3-0308/1994
• Committee report tabled for plenary, single reading: A4-0056/1995
• Debate in Parliament: Debate in Parliament
• Decision by Parliament, 1st reading/single reading: T4-0138/1995
• : Decision 1995/220
• : OJ L 141 24.06.1995, p. 0051

History

(these mark the time of scraping, not the official date of the change)