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 Agency for the
Cooperation of Energy Regulators (ACER).
CONTENT: the organisational governance of the EU
consists of institutions, agencies and other EU bodies whose
expenditure is included in the general budget of the
Union.
This Commission document concerns the EU's
consolidated accounts for the year 2016 and 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 is the responsibility of the Commission's
Accounting Officer to prepare the EU's consolidated annual accounts
and ensure that they present fairly, in all material aspects, the
financial position, the result of the operations and the cash flows
of the EU institutions and bodies, including the Agency for the
Cooperation of Energy Regulators (ACER), with a view to
granting discharge.
Discharge procedure: the
final step of a budget lifecycle is the discharge of the budget for
a given financial year. It 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 (and other EU bodies) from its
responsibility for management of a given budget by marking the end
of that budget's existence. The European Parliament is the
discharge authority within the EU.
The discharge procedure may produce three outcomes:
(i) the granting; (ii) postponement or; (iii) the refusal of the
discharge.
The final discharge report including specific
recommendations to the Commission for action is adopted in plenary
by the European Parliament and are subject to an annual follow up
report in which the Commission outlines the concrete actions it has
taken to implement the recommendations made.
Each agency is subject to its own discharge procedure,
including the ACER.
The Agency for the Cooperation of Energy Regulators
(ACER): the Agency, which is located
in Ljubljana (SI), was set up by Regulation
(EU) No 713/2009 of the European Parliament and of the Council
with a view to helping the Member States’ regulatory
authorities in the areas of electricity and natural gas. Its aim is
to give an opinion on any of the issues relating to the purpose for
which it has been established.
Despite the fact that the Agency continued to struggle
with resource constraints, it largely met its main objectives set
out for 2016.
As regards the Agency’s accounts, these are presented in detail in the document on the
consolidated annual accounts of the European Union for
2016:
Commitment appropriations:
- available: EUR 16 million;
- made: EUR 16 million.
Payment appropriations:
- available: EUR 18 million;
- paid: EUR 12 million.
For further details on expenditure, please refer to
the final
accounts of the ACER.