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Lead | CONT | VALLI Marco (EFD) | SALAFRANCA SÁNCHEZ-NEYRA José Ignacio (EPP), KOHN Arndt (S&D), CZARNECKI Ryszard (ECR), TAKKULA Hannu (ALDE), DE JONG Dennis (GUE/NGL), JÁVOR Benedek (Verts/ALE), JALKH Jean-François (ENF) |
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Opinion | JURI | ||
Opinion | LIBE | ||
Opinion | PECH | ||
Opinion | PETI | ||
Opinion | REGI | ||
Opinion | TRAN |
Activites
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2017/09/13
Committee referral announced in Parliament, 1st reading/single reading
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2017/06/26
Non-legislative basic document published
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COM(2017)0365
summary
PURPOSE: presentation by the Commission of the consolidated annual accounts of the European Union for the financial year 2016, as part of the 2016 discharge procedure. Analysis of the accounts of the EU Institutions: European Ombudsman. Consolidated annual accounts of the EU: this Commission document concerns the EU’s consolidated annual accounts for the year 2016, prepared on the basis of the information presented by the institutions and bodies under Article 148(2) of the Financial Regulation applicable to the general budget of the European Union. It details how spending by the EU institutions and bodies was carried out. The consolidated annual accounts of the EU provide financial information on the activities of the institutions, agencies and other bodies of the EU from an accrual accounting and budgetary perspective. It also presents the accounting principles applicable to the European budget (in particular, consolidation). 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. Audit and discharge: the EU’s annual accounts and resource management are audited by the European Court of Auditors, its external auditor, which as part of its activities draws up for the European Parliament and the Council: an annual report on the activities financed from the general budget, detailing its observations on the annual accounts and underlying transactions; an opinion, based on its audits and given in the annual report in the form of a statement of assurance, on (i) the reliability of the accounts and (ii) the legality and regularity of the underlying transactions involving both revenue collected from taxable persons and payments to final beneficiaries. The European Parliament is the discharge authority within the EU. The discharge represents the final step of a budget lifecycle. It is 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 (and other EU bodies) from its responsibility for management of a given budget by marking the end of that budget's existence. This discharge procedure may produce three outcomes: (i) the granting; (ii) postponement; (iii) or the refusal of the discharge. (2) Implementation of the Ombudsman’s appropriations for the financial year 2016: the appropriations available in the Ombudsman’s budget for 2016 amount to EUR 10 658 951. Of the total appropriations, 95.40 % were committed. As regards the implementation of the Ombudsman’s budget, the 2016 Annual Activity Report stated that the Ombudsman concentrated on the three way strategy to improve the impact, relevance and visibility of the office. This year was characterised by the following: 1 880 new complaints were dealt with; 235 inquiries opened and 291 closed with 182 still ongoing; the highest media coverage in the history of the Ombudsman was reached with a 21% increase in Twitter followers compared to 2015; launch of the process for the website overhaul and improved system to lodge complaints; significant savings on the budget lines for publications and translations. reform of the European Network of Ombudsmen (ENO) in order to increase focus on parallel inquiries and initiatives among interested ombudsman offices in areas of mutual interest, such as migration.
- DG {'url': 'http://ec.europa.eu/info/departments/budget_en', 'title': 'Budget'}, OETTINGER Günther
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COM(2017)0365
summary
Documents
- Non-legislative basic document published: COM(2017)0365
Amendments | Dossier |
31 |
2017/2143(DEC)
2018/03/02
CONT
31 amendments...
Amendment 1 #
Proposal for a decision 1 Paragraph 1 1. Grants the European Ombudsman discharge in respect of the implementation of the budget for the financial year 2016;
Amendment 10 #
Motion for a resolution Paragraph 6 6. Notes with satisfaction that the organisation chart of the Ombudsman has been clarified and is available in its website; asks the Ombudsman to ensure that an updated version of its organisation chart is always available on its website;
Amendment 11 #
Motion for a resolution Paragraph 6 6.
Amendment 12 #
Motion for a resolution Paragraph 6 a (new) 6 a. Notes the results achieved in the complaints handling in 2016 and welcomes the fact that the Union institutions complied with the Ombudsman’s proposals at a rate of 85 %; reiterate its call on the Ombudsman to provide a breakdown of compliance of the Union institutions with its proposals and asks the Union institutions to improve their compliance rate further;
Amendment 13 #
Motion for a resolution Paragraph 7 7.
Amendment 14 #
Motion for a resolution Paragraph 7 7. Stresses the fact that the rate of satisfactory follow-up to the critical remarks the Ombudsman addressed to the different institutions in 201
Amendment 15 #
Motion for a resolution Paragraph 7 a (new) 7 a. Welcomes the introduction of the new fast track procedure for access to document cases as a clear sign that the ombudsman does its utmost to reach a high level of transparency of Union documents; is of the opinion that there is still a room for improvement by almost every other Union institution;
Amendment 16 #
Motion for a resolution Paragraph 8 8. Underlines the importance of making Union citizens aware of the possibility to turn to the Ombudsman in case of maladministration;
Amendment 17 #
Motion for a resolution Paragraph 8 8. Underlines the importance of making Union citizens aware of the possibility to turn to the Ombudsman in case of maladministration; asks the Ombudsman to interpret maladministration as widely as possible when performing its duties; reiterates its call for closer cooperation between the Ombudsman and the Parliament’s Committee on Budgetary Control in its strategic work concerning its inquiries and initiatives;
Amendment 18 #
Motion for a resolution Paragraph 8 a (new) 8 a. 7. Reiterates its concern on the “internal revolving door” between the Ombudsman and other institutions, particularly the Directorates of Commission which might be under the scrutiny of the Ombudsman;
Amendment 19 #
Motion for a resolution Paragraph 10 10. Welcomes the gender balance at management level and within the administrators; encourages the Ombudsman to maintain this trend
Amendment 2 #
Proposal for a decision 1 Paragraph 1 1. Grants the European Ombudsman discharge in respect of the implementation of the budget for the financial year 2016;
Amendment 20 #
Motion for a resolution Paragraph 10 10. Welcomes the gender balance at management level and within the administrators; encourages the Ombudsman to maintain this trend and to do the necessary to improve the still considerable geographic imbalance, particularly in managerial positions;
Amendment 21 #
Motion for a resolution Paragraph 10 a (new) 10 a. Notes the persisting geographical imbalance; notes that two of three managers from the Ombudsman’s Member State occupied managerial positions in the Office for many years before the election of the present Ombudsman and are officials, whereas the third joined as a head of Cabinet at the beginning of the present’s Ombudsman’s office; acknowledges that it is therefore difficult to change the situation in the short-term, but encourages the Ombudsman to strive for geographical balance in management positions in the long-term;
Amendment 22 #
Motion for a resolution Paragraph 11 11. Observes the Ombudsman’s plan to comply with the interinstitutional agreement to reduce staff by 5% over the period of five years;
Amendment 23 #
Motion for a resolution Paragraph 11 a (new) 11 a. Acknowledges that the Ombudsman is experiencing a significant increase in complaints and takes note of the intent to request a moderate budget increase to hire extra multi-lingual staff which the Ombudsman has expressed in its address to the European Parliament on its Annual Report 2016; is concerned that, as a result of the staff reduction, the remaining resources available in each service don’t allow for absorption of the increasing workload; calls on the budgetary authorities to be mindful of the long-term impact of staff cuts, in particular regarding the institution's ability to improve gender and geographical imbalances as well as the need for building on capacity of experienced officials to take over management posts, when planning the future allocation of financial resources for personnel;
Amendment 24 #
Motion for a resolution Paragraph 11 a (new) 11 a. Observes that the 5% staff reduction agreement has led to institutions increasingly hiring staff with temporary contracts; regrets that internal competitions are organised with the aim and result of retaining staff that have previously held the same position under previous temporary contracts; considers it more cost and time efficient as well as transparent and fair if well-performing staff with temporary contracts would be switched to permanent contracts without the added financial and administrative burden of organising competitions with pre-determined outcomes at the expense of disappointing outside applicants;
Amendment 25 #
Motion for a resolution Paragraph 11 a (new) 11 a. Notes the Ombudsman’s commitment on improving transparency in Union decision-making; notes that in 2016 transparency-related inquiries again accounted for the greatest proportion of cases;
Amendment 26 #
Motion for a resolution Paragraph 12 12.
Amendment 27 #
Motion for a resolution Paragraph 13 a (new) 13 a. Expresses the need to establish an independent disclosure, advice and referral body with sufficient budgetary resources, in order to help whistleblowers use the right channels to disclose their information on possible irregularities affecting the financial interests of the Union, while protecting their confidentiality and offering needed support and advice;
Amendment 28 #
Motion for a resolution Paragraph 14 14.
Amendment 29 #
Motion for a resolution Paragraph 14 14. Notes the lack of data from 2016 in different sections of the Ombudsman’s annual activity report for 2016; urges the Ombudsman to provide the follow up to the 2015 discharge before 30 June 2018, in compliance with Article 166 of the Financial Regulation.
Amendment 3 #
Proposal for a decision 1 Paragraph 1 1.
Amendment 30 #
Motion for a resolution Paragraph 14 14.
Amendment 31 #
Motion for a resolution Paragraph 14 a (new) 14 a. Regrets the decision of the United Kingdom to withdraw from the European Union; observes that at this point no predictions can be made about the financial, administrative, human and other consequences related to this withdrawal; asks the Ombudsman and the Court of Auditors to perform impact assessments and inform Parliament on the results by the end of the year 2018;
Amendment 4 #
Proposal for a decision 1 Paragraph 1 1. Grants the European Ombudsman discharge in respect of the implementation of the budget for the financial year 2016;
Amendment 5 #
Motion for a resolution Paragraph 3 a (new) 3 a. Welcomes the overall prudent and sound financial management of the Ombudsman in the 2016 budget period; expresses support for the successful paradigm shift towards performance- based budgeting in the Commission’s budget planning introduced by Vice- President Kristalina Georgieva in September 2015 as part of the “EU Budget Focused on Results” initiative; encourages the Ombudsman to apply the method to its own budget-planning procedure;
Amendment 6 #
Motion for a resolution Paragraph 3 b (new) 3 b. Welcomes that the Ombudsman submitted the Annual Activity report to the Court of Auditors on in March; notes that the Court of Auditors submitted its report to the European Parliament in October and that the discharge will be voted on in plenary by May; notes that by the time discharge is closed, if not postponed, at least 17 months have passed since the closing of annual accounts; points out that auditing in the private sector follows a much stricter timeline; stresses that the discharge procedure needs to be streamlined and sped up; welcomes that the Ombudsman follows the good example set by the private sector and proposes to set a deadline for the submission of Annual Activity reports on 31 March of the following year, a deadline for the submission for the Court of Auditor’s reports on the 1st of July and subsequently vote on the discharge in the plenary session of November, thereby closing the discharge procedure within the year following the accounting year in question;
Amendment 7 #
Motion for a resolution Paragraph 4 4. Notes that of the total appropriations, 95,40% were committed (92,32% in 2015) and 85,89% paid (86,19% in 2015), with a utilisation rate of 95,40% (92,32% in 2015);
Amendment 8 #
Motion for a resolution Paragraph 4 a (new) 4 a. Acknowledges the pivotal role of the Ombudsman in promoting good governance and ensuring the participation of civil society in the EU; notes that the Ombudsman closed 5 strategic inquiries and opened 4 new ones in 2016 on issues related, among others, to transparency and conflict of interests; encourages the Ombudsman to pursue its strategic work with the aim of promoting the good governance of Union institutions;
Amendment 9 #
Motion for a resolution Paragraph 5 5.
source: 618.345
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