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 bio-based
industries joint undertaking - BBI.
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 BBI, 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 bio-based industries joint undertaking -
BBI.
The bio-based industries joint
undertaking: the BBI, a
Public-Private Partnership (PPP) set up in 2014 and located in
Brussels (BE), was established in accordance with Council
Regulation (EU) No 560/2014 establishing the Bio-based
Industries Joint Undertaking. The BBI’s main objective is to
seek a more resource efficient and sustainable low-carbon economy
and increase economic growth and employment, in particularly in
rural areas, by developing sustainable and competitive bio-based
industries in Europe based on advanced biorefineries that source
their biomass sustainably.
As regards the BBI’s accounts, these are presented in detail in the document
published by the Joint Undertaking (please refer to the report
on financial and budgetary management of the BBI).