PURPOSE: presentation by the Commission of the
consolidated annual accounts of the European Union for the
financial year 2012, as part of the 2012 discharge
procedure.
Analysis of the accounts of the EU Institutions:
Section IX – European Data Protection
Supervisor.
Legal reminder: the
consolidated annual accounts of the European Union for the year
2011 have been prepared on the basis of the information presented
by the institutions and bodies under Article 129(2) of the
Financial Regulation applicable to the general budget of the
European Union. They were prepared in accordance with Title VII of
the Financial Regulation and with the accounting principles, rules
and methods set out in the notes to the financial
statements.
The objective of the financial statements is to
provide information about the financial position, performance and
cashflow of a body that is useful to a wide range of users. The
objective is to provide information that is useful for decision
making, and to demonstrate the accountability of the entity for the
resources entrusted to it.
1) Purpose: the document
helps to bring insight into the EU budget mechanism and the way
in which the budget has been managed and spent in 2012. It
recalls that the European Union's operational expenditure covers
the various headings of the financial framework and takes different
forms, depending on how the money is paid out and managed. In
accordance with the Financial Regulation, the Commission implements
the general budget using the following methods: direct or indirect
centralised management (by means of bodies or agencies of public
law or other); decentralised management where the Commission
delegates certain tasks for the implementation of the budget to
third countries; and, thirdly, shared management where budget
implementation tasks are delegated to Member States, in areas such
as agricultural expenditure and structural actions.
The document also presents the different financial
actors involved in the budget process (accounting officers,
internal officers and authorising officers) and recalls their
respective roles in the context of the tasks of sound financial
management.
Amongst the other legal elements relating to the
implementation of the EU budget presented in this document, the
paper focuses on the following issues:
- accounting principles applicable to the management of
EU spending (business continuity, consistency of accounting
methods, comparability of information ...);
- consolidation methods of figures for all major
controlled entities (the consolidated financial statements of the
EU comprise all significant controlled entities –institutions,
organisations and agencies);
- the recognition of financial assets in the EU
(tangible and intangible assets, financial assets and other
miscellaneous investments);
- the way in which EU public expenditure is committed
and spent, including pre-financing (cash advances intended for the
benefit of an EU organ);
- the means of recovery following irregularities
detected;
- the modus operandi of the accounting
system;
- the audit process followed by the European
Parliament's granting of the discharge.
To recap, the final control is the discharge of the
budget for a given financial year. The discharge represents the
political aspect of the external control of budget implementation
and is the decision by which the European Parliament, acting on a
Council recommendation, "releases" the Commission from its
responsibility for management of a given budget by marking the end
of that budget's existence.
The document also details specific expenditure of the
institutions, in particular: i) pensions of former Members and
officials of institutions; ii) joint sickness insurance scheme and
iii) buildings.
Lastly, the document presents a series of tables and
detailed technical indicators on (i) the balance sheet; (ii) the
economic outturn account; (iii) cashflow tables; (iv) technical
annexes concerning the financial statements.
2) Implementation of appropriations under Section IX
of the budget for the financial year 2012: the document comprises a series of detailed tables,
the most important concerning the implementation of the budget.
Concerning the EDPS’s expenditure, the table on the financial
and budgetary implementation of this institution is presented as
follows (information drawn from the Budget and Financial Management Report for the
2012 financial year):
- available appropriations: EUR 7.624
million;
- commitments: EUR 7.258 million (rate of
implementation: 95.21%);
- payments: EUR 6.959 million (rate of implementation
81.28%).
3) Budgetary implementation –
conclusions: in more general and
political terms, the EDPS’s budgetary implementation for the
financial year 2012 was chiefly marked by the following
activities:
- consolidation of administrative cooperation (follow-up
of the technical set-up of the EDPS, cooperation with various
European Commission and Parliament DGs, extended cooperation
agreement for the third time for a period of two years from January
2012);
- conclusion of new cooperation agreements with the
Commission’s Human Resources and Informatics DGs, as well as
with the European Institute of Administration; continuation of
other international agreements with the European Parliament and
other institutions for the everyday management of the EDPS, with a
view to reducing costs;
- impact of the entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty:
expanded tasks in relation to the Stockholm programme and a
resulting increase in staff (2 AD in 2012).