Progress: Procedure completed
Role | Committee | Rapporteur | Shadows |
---|---|---|---|
Lead | CONT | ZDECHOVSKÝ Tomáš ( EPP) | CHINNICI Caterina ( S&D), CSEH Katalin ( Renew), EICKHOUT Bas ( Verts/ALE), KUHS Joachim ( ID), CZARNECKI Ryszard ( ECR), OMARJEE Younous ( GUE/NGL) |
Committee Opinion | ENVI | CANFIN Pascal ( Renew) | Ljudmila NOVAK ( PPE), Michèle RIVASI ( Verts/ALE) |
Lead committee dossier:
Subjects
Events
The European Parliament decided to grant discharge to the Director of the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control in respect of the implementation of the Centre's budget for the financial year 2020 and to approve the closure of the accounts for that year.
Noting that the Court of Auditors stated that it had obtained reasonable assurance that the Authority's annual accounts for the financial year 2020 were reliable and that the underlying transactions were legal and regular, Parliament adopted, by 564 votes to 75 with 2 abstentions, a resolution containing a series of recommendations which form an integral part of the discharge decision and which complement the general recommendations set out in the resolution on the performance, financial management and control of EU agencies.
Centre's financial statements
The Centre's final budget for 2020 was EUR 62 490 000, representing an increase of 5.55 % compared to 2019.
Budgetary and financial management
The budget monitoring efforts during the financial year 2020 resulted in a budget implementation rate of 96.77 %, representing a decrease of 2.46 % compared to 2019. The payment appropriations execution rate was 75.26 %, also representing a decrease of 6.15 % compared to the previous year.
Other observations
Parliament also made a number of observations concerning performance, staff policy, public procurement, conflicts of interest, internal control and Covid-19.
In particular, it noted that:
- the Covid-19 outbreak in 2020 and the subsequent pandemic have been the most serious public health event that the Centre has had to respond to since it became operational in 2005. Supporting the EU’s response to Covid-19 became the Centre’s principal activity;
- the Centre activated its public health event operations plan on 9 January 2020, which guided the organisation through the emergency situation, and allowed it to redirect the resources needed to tackle the pandemic;
- it also delivered 56 % of the outputs initially planned in its single programming document 2020–2022, and 90 % of the outputs of the Covid-19 work programme approved in May 2020. 35 % of the Centre’s initially planned outputs were postponed to 2021 or cancelled;
- the Centre found it challenging to manage the timeliness, quality and completeness of information received from Member States regarding the pandemic given that different surveillance and testing strategies are used by the Member States which make comparisons and assessments difficult, and that, more generally, the Union’s public health competences are limited, which means that the Centre is to a considerable degree dependent on Member States for its effectiveness. Parliament noted that it took for instance almost a year after the Covid-19 outbreak in Europe before Member States used a common colour code system, and showed commitment to submitting their data to the Centre;
- the Centre is developing an entirely new European surveillance system with the aim of progressively covering Covid-19 and all other diseases and health conditions under the Union’s surveillance, thus reducing the reporting burden for Member States;
- on 31 December 2020, the establishment plan was 96.1 % implemented, with 173 temporary agents appointed out of 180 temporary agents authorised under the Union budget (compared to 180 authorised posts in 2019);
- due to the pandemic, the workload in the Centre significantly increased in 2020. The Centre was provided with increased short-term capacity in 2020 and, at the end of 2020, the Centre was also granted a number of long-term staff posts to be filled during the period 2021 to 2024 due to the prolonged sanitary crisis;
- the Centre concluded a total of 130 contracts in 2020, covering 10 framework contracts, 14 direct contracts and 106 specific contracts;
- 22 potential conflicts of interest were identified and investigated in 2020;
- an internal communications policy is to be developed, including communication on the objectives and responsibilities of internal control;
- the Centre increased its outreach significantly in 2020 in connection with the pandemic. Its website had 32 million page views, compared to 9 million between 2011 and 2019 in total.
Documents
- Debate in Parliament: Debate in Parliament
- Decision by Parliament: T9-0167/2022
- Committee report tabled for plenary, single reading: A9-0099/2022
- Committee report tabled for plenary: A9-0099/2022
- Amendments tabled in committee: PE729.966
- Amendments tabled in committee: PE704.725
- Supplementary non-legislative basic document: 06003/2022
- Committee opinion: PE699.302
- Committee draft report: PE698.964
- Court of Auditors: opinion, report: OJ C 439 29.10.2021, p. 0003
- Court of Auditors: opinion, report: N9-0044/2022
- Non-legislative basic document: COM(2021)0381
- Non-legislative basic document: EUR-Lex
- Non-legislative basic document published: COM(2021)0381
- Non-legislative basic document published: EUR-Lex
- Non-legislative basic document: COM(2021)0381 EUR-Lex
- Court of Auditors: opinion, report: OJ C 439 29.10.2021, p. 0003 N9-0044/2022
- Committee draft report: PE698.964
- Committee opinion: PE699.302
- Supplementary non-legislative basic document: 06003/2022
- Amendments tabled in committee: PE704.725
- Amendments tabled in committee: PE729.966
- Committee report tabled for plenary, single reading: A9-0099/2022
Votes
Décharge 2020: Centre européen de prévention et de contrôle des maladies - Discharge 2020: European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control - Entlastung 2020: Europäisches Zentrum für die Prävention und die Kontrolle von Krankheiten - A9-0099/2022 - Tomáš Zdechovský - Proposition de résolution (ensemble du texte) #
Amendments | Dossier |
27 |
2021/2124(DEC)
2021/12/08
ENVI
12 amendments...
Amendment 1 #
Draft opinion Paragraph 1 1. Observes that the mission of the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (the 'Centre') is to identify, assess and communicate current and emerging threats to human health from communicable diseases; emphasises that the COVID-19 outbreak and subsequent pandemic in 2020 was the most serious public health event that the Centre has had to respond to since it became operational in 2005; recognises that the Centre activated its public health event operations plan on 9 January 2020 and, specifically, that teams working on public health emergencies contibuted positively to the Union and national governance frameworks for the COVID-19 pandemic;
Amendment 10 #
Draft opinion Paragraph 9 b (new) 9 b. Highlights the fact that growing antimicrobial resistance still poses a threat to public health, despite the fact that overall EU consumption of antimicrobials has continued to decline; welcomes the Centre's continued activity in this area;
Amendment 11 #
Draft opinion Paragraph 9 c (new) Amendment 12 #
Draft opinion Paragraph 9 d (new) 9 d. Acknowledges the reasons for the cancellation or postponement of 35% of the Centre's planned outputs in 2020, while highlighting the fact that the Centre achieved a 90% success rate in meeting the work programme output plan adopted additionally in May 2020; thanks its staff for their dedicated work in difficult circumstances;
Amendment 2 #
Draft opinion Paragraph 1 1. Observes that the mission of the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (the 'Centre') is to identify, assess and communicate current and emerging threats to human health from communicable diseases; emphasises that the COVID-19 outbreak and subsequent pandemic in 2020 was the most serious public health event that the Centre has had to respond to since it became operational in 2005, and that supporting the Union's response to COVID-19 became its principal activity; notes, moreover, that the Centre started operating at Public Health Event (PHE) level 2, acute phase on 31 January 2020 and continued to operate in this phase for the remainder of the year;
Amendment 3 #
Draft opinion Paragraph 1 a (new) 1 a. Notes that the Centre gave assistance to Member States and the Commission with laboratory-related support and expanded testing, strengthening Member States' preparedness through the establishment of operational indicators and support in the assessment of health services surge capacity;
Amendment 4 #
Draft opinion Paragraph 2 2. Highlights the 24 COVID-19 related risk assessments carried out by the Centre, the 159 COVID-19 formal scientific requests from the Commission and Members of the European Parliament, and the more than 100 formal scientific requests from Member States; furthermore notes that the number of downloads of rapid risk assessments increased by 1086 percent when compared with 2019 figures;
Amendment 5 #
Draft opinion Paragraph 2 2. Highlights the
Amendment 6 #
Draft opinion Paragraph 6 a (new) 6 a. Welcomes the proposal to extend the Centre’s mandate but expresses concern that the addition of new tasks and its increasing workload has not been accompanied by sufficient corresponding increases in the Centre's staff and resources, and that such a shortage of staff puts the continuity of its operations under significant pressure and threatens the quality of the Centre’s work;
Amendment 7 #
Draft opinion Paragraph 8 8. Welcomes the improvement in the percentage of management board members, advisory forum members and their alternates submitting the required annual declarations of interest in 2020 compared to the figures for 2019; calls on the Centre to ensure that
Amendment 8 #
Draft opinion Paragraph 9 a (new) 9 a. Stresses the need for the Centre to ensure full transparency in publishing scientific studies and in enhancing its external communications capacity towards the general public, ensuring that all key information related to public health emergencies is available in all Union languages and easily accessible to Union citizens;
Amendment 9 #
Draft opinion Paragraph 9 a (new) 9 a. Welcomes the Commission's proposal to expand the Centre's remit in response to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic; expresses its belief that a rapid, effective, informed and coordinated response across Member States is essential, both to deal with the current situation and to address possible future threats;
source: 702.915
2022/03/03
CONT
15 amendments...
Amendment 1 #
Proposal for a decision 1 Citation 1 a (new) — having regard to the Court of Auditor's Review No 01/2021 on 'The EU’s initial contribution to the public health response to COVID-19,
Amendment 10 #
Motion for a resolution Paragraph 10 a (new) 10 a. Is concerned about the large size of the Centre’s management board which makes decision-making difficult and generates considerable administrative costs;
Amendment 11 #
Motion for a resolution Paragraph 10 b (new) 10 b. Welcomes the efforts made in the Centre's staff policy to promote teleworking and healthy life and continues to encourage the Centre to pursue the development of a long term human resources policy framework that addresses work-life balance, lifelong guidance and career development, gender balance, teleworking, geographical balance and the recruitment and integration of people with disabilities;
Amendment 12 #
Motion for a resolution Paragraph 11 a (new) 11 a. Requests the disclosure of the results of the tender 2020/S 138-3382451a targeting 'the development of training courses aimed to strengthen the public health capacity in Europe to respond to the challenges encountered in the area of vaccine hesitancy and communication around vaccination', as well as of the strategy employed by the tender winner to achieve those results; _________________ 1a https://ted.europa.eu/udl?uri=TED:NOTI CE:338245-2020:TEXT:EN:HTML
Amendment 13 #
Motion for a resolution Paragraph 15 a (new) 15 a. Takes note of the European Ombudsman’s decision of 5 February 2021 in strategic inquiry OI/3/2020/TE on 'how the ECDC gathered and communicated information during the COVID-19 crisis' and appreciates the conclusion that no maladministration has been found; notes, however, that despite the acknowledgement of the Ombudsman of the efforts made by the Centre during the COVID-19 crisis to conduct its scientific assessment in a transparent manner, the Ombudsman considers that the mandate of the Centre prevents an independent collection of data, limiting in a significant way its tasks and, furthermore, that there is room for the Centre to improve how it communicates information to the public offering their translations in the largest number of official languages possible; asks the Centre to report to the discharge authority about measures taken for such an improvement;
Amendment 14 #
Motion for a resolution Paragraph 19 19.
Amendment 15 #
Motion for a resolution Paragraph 21 a (new) 21 a. Recalls the importance of increasing the digitalisation of the Centre in terms of internal operation and management but also in order to speed up the digitalisation of procedures; stresses the need for the Centre to continue to be proactive in this regard in order to avoid a digital gap between the Union agencies at all costs;
Amendment 2 #
Motion for a resolution Recital A A. whereas, according to its statement of revenue and expenditure1 , the final budget of the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (the ‘Centre’) for the financial year 2020 was EUR 62 490 000, representing an increase of 5,55 % compared to 2019; whereas the inflation rate was 0,7 % in the Union in 2020; whereas approximately 97,62 % of the Centre’s budget derives from the Union budget; _________________ 1 OJ C 114, 31.3.2021, p. 39.
Amendment 3 #
Motion for a resolution Paragraph 2 a (new) 2 a. Regrets the excessive dependence on WHO data and analysis with regard to the COVID-19 pandemic; considers that the Centre should have a greater added- value given its budget;
Amendment 4 #
Motion for a resolution Paragraph 3 a (new) 3 a. Notes with concern the conclusion of the Court’s Review No 01/2021 on 'The EU’s initial contribution to the public health response to COVID-19' ('the Court's review'), that it was challenging for the Centre to manage the timeliness, quality and completeness of information received from Member States; stresses however the Court’s observation that the different surveillance and testing strategies used by the Member States make comparisons and assessments difficult, and that more in general, the Union’s public health competences are limited, which means that the Centre is to a considerable degree dependent on Member States for its effectiveness; notes that it took for instance almost a year since the COVID-19 outbreak in Europe before Member States used a common colour code system, and showed commitment to submitting their data to the Centre; notes that the Centre responded to the Court's review by cautioning that considerable work still needs to be done to establish robust population-based surveillance of COVID- 19, and remarks that since then the Centre has taken steps to address this matter;
Amendment 5 #
Motion for a resolution Paragraph 3 b (new) 3 b. Welcomes that, separate from the Court’s review, the Centre initiated its own strategic analysis by an external contractor on the Centre's response to COVID-19 from January to September 2020; notes that this strategic analysis shows that the Centre provides high- quality surveillance data that is widely relied upon, and that its guidance is a critical input for decision makers, but that simultaneously, there is clear potential for the Centre to be more effective; notes the recommendations of the strategic analysis, stating that the Centre should place larger emphasis on the practicality of recommendations, should place a larger emphasis on forward guidance, and should more systematically support learning and exchanges of experience between Member States; notes the recommendations of the strategic analysis for a senior strategic lead function, better differentiation of internal processes for producing technical outputs, and the enhancement of its capabilities; calls on the Centre to report on the measures taken in this regard and inform the discharge authority about the progress made;
Amendment 6 #
Motion for a resolution Paragraph 3 c (new) 3 c. Notes that the Centre’s external strategic assessment indicates that in the long term, there are important questions about the role that the Centre should play in the larger European public health security landscape; notes that those questions relate to the appropriate degree of European coordination of public health policies and data, the relevant roles of various actors and the strategic focus of the Centre; notes that the Commission has discussed these questions in its review of the Centre’s role, and that since then, changes in the European public health security landscape have been made;
Amendment 7 #
Motion for a resolution Paragraph 4 a (new) 4 a. Notes that the institutional context in which the Centre operates is changing as a consequence of the lessons learned during the COVID-19 pandemic; calls upon the Court to expand in its audit for the next financial year in relation to how the Centre is operating within this adjusted institutional context, and whether, within the adjusted institutional setting, the Centre has enough resources to implement its mandate effectively;
Amendment 8 #
Motion for a resolution Paragraph 9 9. Notes that the Centre has adopted a policy on protecting the dignity of the person and preventing harassment; takes note that two cases of alleged harassment have been reported and one case was brought to the Court of Justice of the European Union in 2020; calls on the Centre to inform the discharge authority about the status of that case; calls on the Centre to ensure continuous measures aiming at strengthening ethical framework at the workplace, preventing burnout and harassment;
Amendment 9 #
Motion for a resolution Paragraph 9 9. Notes that the Centre has adopted a policy on protecting the dignity of the person and preventing harassment; takes note that two cases of alleged harassment have been reported and one case was brought to the Court of Justice of the European Union in 2020; calls on the Centre to report to the discharge authority on the developments in this regard;
source: 704.725
|
History
(these mark the time of scraping, not the official date of the change)
events/4/docs |
|
events/6 |
|
procedure/final |
|
procedure/stage_reached |
Old
Procedure completed, awaiting publication in Official JournalNew
Procedure completed |
docs/1 |
|
events/5/docs/0/url |
https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/TA-9-2022-0167_EN.html
|
docs/7 |
|
events/5/summary |
|
procedure/subject/8.70.03.10 |
2020 discharge
|
docs/0 |
|
docs/0 |
|
docs/6 |
|
docs/7 |
|
events/0 |
|
events/0 |
|
events/3/docs |
|
events/4 |
|
events/5 |
|
forecasts |
|
procedure/stage_reached |
Old
Awaiting Parliament's voteNew
Procedure completed, awaiting publication in Official Journal |
procedure/subject/8.70.03.10 |
2020 discharge
|
forecasts |
|
forecasts |
|
events/3 |
|
procedure/stage_reached |
Old
Awaiting committee decisionNew
Awaiting Parliament's vote |
events/2 |
|
docs/5/date |
Old
2022-03-28T00:00:00New
2022-03-29T00:00:00 |
docs/5/date |
Old
2022-03-22T00:00:00New
2022-03-28T00:00:00 |
docs/5 |
|
docs/3 |
|
docs/3/docs/0/url |
https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/CONT-AM-704725_EN.html
|
docs/3 |
|
forecasts |
|
docs/1/docs/0/url |
https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/CONT-PR-698964_EN.html
|
docs/2 |
|
docs/1 |
|
committees/1/rapporteur |
|
events/1 |
|
procedure/dossier_of_the_committee |
|
procedure/stage_reached |
Old
Preparatory phase in ParliamentNew
Awaiting committee decision |
committees/0/shadows/4 |
|
commission |
|
committees/0 |
|
committees/0 |
|