54 Amendments of Petri SARVAMAA related to 2018/2166(DEC)
Amendment 39 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 4
Paragraph 4
4. Notes with satisfaction that for 2017, the Court has issued for a second consecutive year a qualified (rather than an adverse) opinion on the legality and regularity of the payments underlying the accounts, which according to the Court, indicates that a significant part of the 2017 expenditure audited by it was not materially affected by error and that the level of irregularities in EU spending has continued to decrease;
Amendment 58 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 12
Paragraph 12
12. Notes with concern that for the second year in a row, DG Budget set a reservation on the value of TOR collected by the UK, due to the country’s failure to make available to the EU budget evaded customs duties on textiles and footwear imports;
Amendment 61 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 13
Paragraph 13
13. Welcomes the infringement procedure initiated by the Commission on 8 March 2018 as a follow-up to the UK customs fraud case, but regrets that it took the Commission more than 7 years to launch this procedure after its request to the UK in 2011 to set risk profiles for under-valued textiles and footwear imports from China; points out that the similar fraud networks operate in other Member States avoiding paying at least 2.5 billion EUR in custom duties since 2015; reaffirms the clear need for more cooperation between custom services in the Member States to avoid the harm of EU and national budgets and of EU product standards; demands information from the Commission which products reach the internal market without respecting EU product standards;
Amendment 81 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 22
Paragraph 22
22. Observes with satisfaction that the Court found very few public procurement errors in 2017: less than 1 % (2016 - 18 %), but notes that the reason for this could be the relatively low level of expenditure accepted under the ERDF and the CF, which used to be more prone to errors in public procurement; calls on the Commission and Member States not to weaken, but to continue strengthening their vigilance on the correct implementation of the public procurement rules;
Amendment 83 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 22 a (new)
Paragraph 22 a (new)
22a. Noticed that the AAR of the DG RTD mentioned 6 different error rates, three for FP7 and three for Horizon 2020; stresses that such an approach does not facilitate transparency and accountability; accepts however that two different programmes under two different financial periods were concerned;
Amendment 86 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 22 b (new)
Paragraph 22 b (new)
22b. calls on the DG RTD to publish its country specific recommendations in the AAR of DG RTD;
Amendment 88 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 22 b (new)
Paragraph 22 b (new)
22b. Notes that the residual error rates calculated by the Court (3 %) and the Commission (1.39 %) differ considerably;
Amendment 91 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 27 a (new)
Paragraph 27 a (new)
27a. Welcomes in particular, with regard to structural funds, the Court’s audit work on preventive measures and financial corrections, the ex-ante conditionalities, the performance reserve and absorption;
Amendment 95 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 28
Paragraph 28
28. Expresses concernRegrets that the Court identified and quantified 36 errors in its sample of 217 transactions for 2017, which audit authorities in Member States had not detected, and that the number and the impact of these errors indicate persisting weaknesses with the regularity of the expenditure declared by managing authorities;
Amendment 103 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 33 a (new)
Paragraph 33 a (new)
33a. Sees the need to further clarify procurement procedures and the bidder situation in Member States as bidding procedures may have turned in semi legal procedures preventing competition and possibly promoting fraud; welcomes the ‘single bidder’ study of the Commission and awaits the results;
Amendment 104 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 37
Paragraph 37
37. WelcomNotes the fact that direct payments per hectare decreased with increasing farm size, while the income per worker increased, and that according to the Commission the CAP is currently operating an inclusive system of support where very small farms, of less than 5 ha, represent over half of the beneficiaries; is very concerned about the heavy change of the agricultural structure with strongly growing inequalities of direct payments per beneficiary in some new Member States, mainly Slovakia and the Czech Republic, where 7 % of the beneficiaries receive currently over 70 % of all direct payments; calls on the Commission and the Slovak and Czech authorities to remedy those increasing inequalities;
Amendment 105 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 37
Paragraph 37
37. Welcomes the factNotes that direct payments per hectare decreased with increasing farm size, while the income per worker increased, and that according to the Commission the CAP is currently operating an inclusive system of support where very small farms, of less than 5 ha, represent over half of the beneficiaries;
Amendment 106 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 37 a (new)
Paragraph 37 a (new)
37a. Notes a fast increase in inequalities of direct payments in some other Member States, mainly Estonia, Latvia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria and Denmark over the last ten years with a growing share of beneficiaries receiving more than EUR 100 000; calls on the Commission and the national authorities to take appropriate measures and to report thereof;
Amendment 113 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 40
Paragraph 40
40. Notes with concern that the results of the cross compliance on the spot checks made by DG AGRI are worrying, and in particular that 47 % of the total number of on the spot checks has led to sanctions; askurges the Commission to check the implementation of the remedial action taken by Member State authorities where it found it could place no or limited reliance on the certification body’s work;
Amendment 114 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 40 a (new)
Paragraph 40 a (new)
Amendment 117 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 40 b (new)
Paragraph 40 b (new)
40b. Recalls in particular, that the Director General of DG AGRI refers to an analysis made by an external contractor, which found that: ‘overall, the greening measures have led to only small changes in farmers’ management practices, except in a few specific areas. For both Member States and farmers, instead of environmental priorities, the main concern tended to consist in minimising the administrative burden of implementation, and avoiding any errors as controls and enforcement may lead to the reduction of CAP payments’;
Amendment 118 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 40 c (new)
Paragraph 40 c (new)
40c. Calls on the Commission to provide structural data for the 20 biggest receivers of direct payments in Member States;
Amendment 119 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 40 d (new)
Paragraph 40 d (new)
40d. Is concerned that the highly critical ECA Special Reports 10/2017 and 21/2017 on Young Farmers and Greening, showing that almost no desired result was achieved, did not have financial consequences; criticises that the financing of those policy areas just goes on as if nothing had happened;
Amendment 122 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 43 a (new)
Paragraph 43 a (new)
43a. Welcomes the fact the Commission has adopted ambitious objectives in the policy area of migration and security and, in particular, that the Commission intends - as to the illegal migration to: (a) work with the countries of transit and origin to prevent irregular flows; (b) address the root causes of migration; (c) improve cooperation and readmission, fight against migrant smuggling, achieve effective returns of irregular migrants (EU resettlement schemes and EU/Turkey statement of March 2016); (d) put in place the EU relocation scheme, reinforce the management of the external borders and to reform the Common European Asylum System;
Amendment 123 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 43 b (new)
Paragraph 43 b (new)
43b. Notes that the achievement of the objectives are measured through the following key performance objectives: (a) rate of return of irregular migrants to the third countries measured as % of effected returns compared to return decisions issued by MS; (b) convergence of protection recognition rates for asylum seekers from the same country; (c) use of EU information exchange mechanisms measured through the number of hits in SIS and Prüm databases and the use of Europol’s Siena and EIS; (d) number of operations conducted with the involvement European Cyber-crime Centre at Europol; (e) compliance approach: error rate below 2 %;
Amendment 127 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 47 a (new)
Paragraph 47 a (new)
47a. Recommends (a) the Commission to define and put in place a balanced and comprehensive migration policy based on the principles of solidarity and partnership instead of considering the migration policy as a crisis management issue; (b) DG HOME to introduce a Key Performance Indicator relating to situation of the most vulnerable migrants and in particular child migrants and refugee women and girls in order to prevent and avoid abuse and trafficking; (c) DG HOME to systematically provide error rates at payment and residual error rate; (d) the Commission to require Member States, in the annual accounts of their AMIF and ISF national programmes, to break down the nature of the amounts they report into recoveries, pre-financing and expenditure actually incurred; and report in its AAR from 2018 onwards the actual spending per fund;
Amendment 129 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 47 b (new)
Paragraph 47 b (new)
47b. Points out that there is a risk that EU money foreseen for development is used for other purposes as-to fight illegal migration or military action;
Amendment 130 #
Motion for a resolution
Subheading 14 a (new)
Subheading 14 a (new)
Czech Republic
Amendment 131 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 47 c (new)
Paragraph 47 c (new)
47c. Is deeply worried that an EU legal document, dated 19 November 2018, pointed out that the situation of Czech Prime Minister qualifies as a conflict of interest, because he could influence decisions on the use of Union funds of which companies linked to him had benefited;
Amendment 132 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 47 d (new)
Paragraph 47 d (new)
47d. Notes that the Agrofert Holding is the single biggest group in Czech agriculture and food industry, second largest in chemistry and plays a significant role also in forestry; furthermore recalls that Agrofert is also an owner of the MAFRA Publishing Company a.s., one of the largest media groups publishing some of the most popular printed and online media, such as MF DNES, Lidové noviny, iDnes; calls on the Commission to investigate also the situation of the Czech PM as media owner to draw clean conclusions from this case;
Amendment 133 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 47 e (new)
Paragraph 47 e (new)
47e. Notes with deep regret that, despite multiple alerts raised by the European Parliament, the Commission has reacted to the issue of the Czech PM only after Transparency International Czech Republic filed a complaint against the conflict of interest of Mr Babiš in June 2018;
Amendment 134 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 47 f (new)
Paragraph 47 f (new)
47f. Recalls that the Commission services have asked the national authority responsible for the coordination of EU Funds (Ministry of Regional Development) to provide the following information with respect to funding to enterprises being part of the his company holding: (a) list of all projects financed by the ERDF, Cohesion Fund, ESF, EAFRD which relate to the AGROFERT group since 2012 when the current Prime Minister entered as Minister of Finance the government, and whether the projects are still ongoing or have been completed; (b) the amounts granted, already paid and still to be paid (as well as the Fund concerned) to these companies or to other companies of the AGROFERT group to allow us i) to confirm the amounts mentioned in the complaint and ii) possibly identify other funding, if any; (c) periods when such amounts were granted and paid; (d) whether the projects were subject to verifications (administrative and/or on- the-spot) with respect to such funding and the outcome of such verifications;
Amendment 135 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 47 g (new)
Paragraph 47 g (new)
47g. Welcomes that the Czech Ministry of Regional Development has collected the requested information from the different managing authorities concerned and has forwarded it to the Commission;
Amendment 136 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 47 h (new)
Paragraph 47 h (new)
47h. Asks the Commission what action it intends to take in light of the recent legal appreciation of the situation;
Amendment 137 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 47 i (new)
Paragraph 47 i (new)
47i. Recalls that the European Parliament asked last year the Commission to speed up the conformity clearance procedure opened on 8 January 2016 to get detailed and precise information on the risk of conflicts of interest concerning the State’s Agricultural Intervention Fund in the Czech Republic;
Amendment 138 #
Motion for a resolution
Subheading 14 b (new)
Subheading 14 b (new)
Greece
Amendment 139 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 47 j (new)
Paragraph 47 j (new)
47j. Welcomes the progress made in implementing the 181 Greece priority projects: (a) 119 projects with expenditure of EUR 7.1 billion are reported as completed; (b) 17 projects with expenditure of EUR 0.5 billion are to be completed by March 2019 with national funds (additional EUR 0.53 billion estimated to be needed); (c) 24 projects (EUR 0.8 billion) are phased into 2014-2020 where they are estimated to require another EUR 1.1 billion funding; (d) 21 items with an estimated budget of EUR 1.1 billion were cancelled; sees a success story in the way the Commission supported Greece to implement and finish Union projects;
Amendment 140 #
Motion for a resolution
Subheading 14 c (new)
Subheading 14 c (new)
Hungary
Amendment 141 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 47 k (new)
Paragraph 47 k (new)
47k. Recalls that the European Anti- Fraud Office (OLAF) found serious irregularities in the ELIOS- and “Heart- of-Budapest” projects; in the first case a small amount of funds was recovered, whereas in the second case the Hungarian authorities had accepted the financial correction, but the latter had not been implemented last September; notes that the facts surrounding the Metro-line- four are still “sub judice”;
Amendment 142 #
Motion for a resolution
Subheading 14 d (new)
Subheading 14 d (new)
Slovakia
Amendment 143 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 47 l (new)
Paragraph 47 l (new)
47l. Notes that there are currently 6 conformity enquiries ongoing in relation to Slovakia; for Rural Development, DG AGRI audits have found a number of deficiencies in the management and control of investment and forestry measures; as regards the management of the area-based direct payments, a DG AGRI audit performed in 2017 indicated that there are certain weaknesses in the administration and control system and an OLAF investigation is currently ongoing on allegations of fraud;
Amendment 144 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 47 m (new)
Paragraph 47 m (new)
47m. Asks the Commission to speed up the conformity procedures and keep the EP informed about the follow-up; is of the opinion that measures could be taken on the basis of the financial regulation pending the outcome of the enquiries, as for instance the interruption or suspension of the funds; calls on the Commission to examine the possibility to withdraw of the accreditation of the paying agency;
Amendment 154 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 60
Paragraph 60
60. Notes that, according to the European Innovation Scoreboard (EIS) the innovation performance of the EU has increased by 5.8 % since 2010; notes, however, that there has been no convergence between EU countries; notes that the following countries benefit most from the funds under Horizon 2020 (Participant Net Requested EU Contribution in Euro): Germany 5 710 188 927.80 / United Kingdom 5 152 013 650.95 / France 3 787 670 675.13; calls on the Commission to pay greater attention to the geographic distribution of research funds with the view to contributing to the creation of a level playing field for growth and jobs in the European research area;
Amendment 167 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 73 a (new)
Paragraph 73 a (new)
73a. Is worried about the lack of transparency in spending for financial instruments as four times more money is available for financial instruments under the current MFF; recalls that three years after the start of this MFF only 10 % of the ESI funds being spent through Financial Instruments under shared management have reached the final beneficiary; calls on the Commission to significantly improve reporting on the results of those instruments for 2007-2013 and 2014-2020.
Amendment 168 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 73 b (new)
Paragraph 73 b (new)
73b. Calls on the Commission to present accurate and complete information on financial instruments under shared management after closure of the 2007-2013 MFF period, indicating amounts returned to the Union budget and those remaining in the Member States;
Amendment 171 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 75
Paragraph 75
75. Is deeply concerned by the factNotes that, according to the Court, 64 % of the total value of EFSI contracts that the EIB Group had signed by the end of 2017 was concentrated in six Member States: France, Italy, Spain, Germany, UK, Poland;
Amendment 173 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 76
Paragraph 76
76. Calls on the Commission to ensure that EFSI’s management bodies take into account the need for a proper geographical balance when signing contracts and to report back to the Parliament on the progress achieved;
Amendment 188 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 85
Paragraph 85
85. Is not satisfied byNotes the Commission’s written reaction to Parliament’s resolution from 18 April 2018, which demonstrates a lack of sensitivity for; underlines the importance European citizens attach to transparent, fair and open recruitment procedures;
Amendment 193 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 86
Paragraph 86
86. Regrets the defiantTakes note of the Commission reply to the European Ombudsman of 3 December 2018, which shows little discernment of the points raised by the Ombudsman after the examination of 11 000 pages of documentation;
Amendment 203 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 93 a (new)
Paragraph 93 a (new)
93a. Notes that in the Communication of the Commission on the follow up of the 2016 discharge, COM (2018) 545, the Commission made a selection of the 394 issues that are raised by the Parliament for the financial year 2016 and did not comment on 108 paragraphs; demands that the Commission replies in detail to all the issues raised by the European Parliament in its resolutions forming an integral part of its decisions on the discharge;
Amendment 233 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 117 – point f a (new)
Paragraph 117 – point f a (new)
fa) introduce or improve measures and incentives to foster a greater focus on performance in the Commission’s internal culture, taking into account in particular opportunities offered by the revised Financial Regulation, the Budget Focused on Results initiative, performance reporting for on-going projects, and other sources;
Amendment 235 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 117 – point f b (new)
Paragraph 117 – point f b (new)
fb) develop data processing methods for the vast quantities of data created with performance reporting with the goal of giving a timely, fair and true picture on achievements; insists that performance reporting should be used to take corrective action when objectives of programs are not met;
Amendment 240 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 118 b (new)
Paragraph 118 b (new)
118 b. Welcomes the proposal made by the ECA in its consultation paper on ‘Recurrent reporting on the performance of EU action’ to annually publish, in November of year N+1, an evaluation of the performance of EU action, covering a detailed review of the performance information reported by the Commission in the article 318 TFEU evaluation report; insists once again that this report should contain in a second part a detailed review of the synthesis of the financial management of the Commission as stated in the second part of the Annual Management and performance report;
Amendment 241 #
118c. Recalls that the ultimate objective of a more performance focussed audit analysis should be to put in place a global and consistent cost/benefit model assessing the implementation of the European budget;
Amendment 242 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 118 d (new)
Paragraph 118 d (new)
118d. Insists that the ECA should improve the coordination between project level performance assessments carried out in the context of the Statement of Assurance work and the remainder of its performance work, through the reporting, in particular, of the main conclusions of its special reports in sectoral chapters of its Annual report;
Amendment 243 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 118 e (new)
Paragraph 118 e (new)
118e. Requests the ECA to provide the discharge authorities with an assessment in terms of both compliance and performance, of each European policies, following chapter by chapter the budget headings in the ECA annual report;
Amendment 254 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 126 a (new)
Paragraph 126 a (new)
126a. Is worried - as in previous years - how the Directorates-General calculate the error rate and about the lack of reference to the discharge year 2017, which undermines the credibility of the Commission’s figures, the discharge procedure and amounts to deliberately keeping the error rate low: (a) the Residual Error Rate of DG DEVCO and DG NEAR does not refer to a sample of all payments for ongoing projects, but only to closed contracts, for which all controls and checks have been applied with the consequence that only pre-2017 payments, for which discharge has already been granted, have been analysed; as a result, the error rate of the Court of Auditors, collected by another method, is the only meaningful one; (b) DG HOME only reports, for the Asylum, Migration and Integration Fund/Internal Security Fund, an error rate from which financial corrections have already been deducted; Parliament is therefore unable to understand which corrections have been made and which error rate we really face; (c) Member States´ Audit Authorities communicate to DG REGIO the error rates for Structural Funds after deduction of corrections which does not give a real picture of the situation of EU projects on the spot; (d) states that for 2017 the Commission presented at least 13 different error rates for the programming period 2007-2013 and 2014-2020; this makes reporting unclear and confusing;
Amendment 256 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 126 b (new)
Paragraph 126 b (new)
126b. Is worried that the Annual Management and Performance Report compares very different figures and is therefore misleading: whereas the Court´s estimated level of error is an error rate at payment and without deduction of corrections, the Commissions global amount at risk reported in the AMPR is calculated after deduction of corrections; finds the comparisons by the Commission inacceptable; calls on the Commission to separate error rates and corrections and to issue reservations before corrections and not only after to correctly estimate the risk of error;
Amendment 257 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 126 c (new)
Paragraph 126 c (new)
126c. Supports the Court of Auditors in calculating the error rate without taking corrections into account; calls on the Commission to indicate error rates without corrections in all annual activity reports and to give a clear picture on corrections due to errors;