48 Amendments of Jan MULDER related to 2007/2037(DEC)
Amendment 1 #
Paragraph 1
1. .....Postpones its decision on granting the Commission discharge in respect of the implementation of the European Union general budget for the financial year 2006;
Amendment 10 #
Motion for a resolution
Heading before paragraph -1 (new)
Heading before paragraph -1 (new)
Request the Commission to fulfil the following conditions before 10 April 2008:
Amendment 11 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph -1 (new)
Paragraph -1 (new)
Amendment 19 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 3a (new)
Paragraph 3a (new)
3a. Recalls that in 2006 Community funding of Structural Policies totalled EUR 32,4 billion; points out that for 2007 this amount has risen to EUR 46,4 billion not including co-financing by Member States;
Amendment 20 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 3b (new)
Paragraph 3b (new)
3b. Notes with great concern that in its 2006 Annual report, the ECA indicates that the reimbursement of expenditure to Structural Policies projects is subject to material error; that the proportion of reimbursements in the sample affected by error was 44% and "at least 12% of the total amount reimbursed in structural policies should not have been reimbursed;
Amendment 21 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 3c (new)
Paragraph 3c (new)
Amendment 22 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 3d (new)
Paragraph 3d (new)
3d. Urges therefore Commission to make use of ex-ante checks to verify if supervisory and control systems for the 2007-2013 period are in place in all the Member States and to regularly follow-up on them;
Amendment 23 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 3e (new)
Paragraph 3e (new)
3e. Regrets also that, according to the ECA, the Commission maintains only moderately effective supervision to mitigate the risks of control systems in the Member States, failing to prevent reimbursement of overstated or ineligible expenditure;
Amendment 24 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 3f (new)
Paragraph 3f (new)
3f. Notes with regret that, as pointed out by the ECA, for expenditure under structural policies (such as under the CAP and internal policies) complicated or unclear eligibility criteria or complex legal requirements have a negative impact on the legality and regularity of the underlying transactions;
Amendment 25 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 3g (new)
Paragraph 3g (new)
3g. Finds it unacceptable that according to Commission1 little evolution is to be expected concerning simplification for the existing regulations for the 2007-2013 period for Structural Funds and that further simplification will only be proposed for the next legislative round; __________ 1 Commission statement under Action 1 in the Progress report on the Action Plan towards an Integrated Internal Control Framework (COM (2008)0110)
Amendment 26 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 3h (new)
Paragraph 3h (new)
3h. Urges the Commission to follow up on the recommendation given by the ECA (paragraph 6.45) concerning the Cohesion Fund and to present further simplification proposals as soon as possible to the legislative authority, among others including clear and straightforward rules, guidelines and eligibility criteria;
Amendment 27 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 3i (new)
Paragraph 3i (new)
3i. Considers and fully agrees with the ECA on this point, that Member State authorities have a very important role in the effective implementation of Structural Funds and Commission should reinforce their audits and make supplementary efforts with the supervision of the Managing Authorities in the Member States;
Amendment 28 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 3j (new)
Paragraph 3j (new)
3j. Regrets the lack of incentives for Member States to effectively control the expenditure, since any ineligible expenditure identified by the Commission or the ECA, can be substituted for eligible expenditure by the Member State; asks the Commission to make sure that in the future only irregularities identified by Member States themselves could be substituted for other expenditure without any loss of funding for the Member State concerned;
Amendment 29 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 3k (new)
Paragraph 3k (new)
3k. Welcomes the Commission's new Action Plan to strengthen the Commission’s supervisory role for structural actions (COM(2008)0097) with 37 measures aimed at reducing irregular payments made by Member States; welcomes also the Commission's commitment announced publicly in the committee hearing held on 25 February2008 to report quarterly to the Parliament on the progress of this Action Plan; expects the Commission to develop the reporting scheme in cooperation with the ECA;
Amendment 30 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 3l (new)
Paragraph 3l (new)
Amendment 31 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 3m (new)
Paragraph 3m (new)
3m. Asks the Commission to present to Parliament a scoreboard with a final implementation date on the implementation of the Action Plan to strengthen the Commission's supervisory role under shared management of Structural Actions(COM(2008)0097), including a common scheme of quantitative indicators and intermediate deadlines for its implementation; Is of the opinion that Commission should focus on the reliability of national monitoring and reporting systems, guidance to Member States and coordination of audit standards and should always give a breakdown per Member State;
Amendment 32 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 3n (new)
Paragraph 3n (new)
3n. Expects the Commission to initiate infringement procedures against those Member States which have not complied with their obligations under the Regulations on Structural Funds, the Financial Regulation and its implementing rules and the Interinstitutional Agreement, in particular those who are not presenting reports on recoveries and financial corrections and those who are not presenting the annual summaries in conformity with the guidelines or those where the quality of the annual summaries is inadequate;
Amendment 33 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 3o (new)
Paragraph 3o (new)
3o. Stresses the importance of Commission guidelines to effectively live up to the Interinstitutional Agreement; is of the opinion that these guidelines as a first step, should at least entail what is requested under the sector regulation for Agriculture (i.e. Declaration of Assurance signed by the head of the Managing Authority accompanied by a certification report);
Amendment 34 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 3p (new)
Paragraph 3p (new)
3p. Insists that the Commission should start suspension procedures against Member States where first level control systems are inadequate, it has to speed up the sanctions system and present to Parliament a concrete plan of the timing and sanctions to be applied upon identification of irregularities;
Amendment 35 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 3q (new)
Paragraph 3q (new)
3q. Insists on auditable reporting to Parliament on corrections and recoveries by the Commission for all unduly made payments for all funds, with precise definitions of all these different categories of financial corrections; expects the Commission to develop these reporting schemes in cooperation with the ECA and asks the ECA to give an opinion on the quality of the reports presented;
Amendment 36 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 3r (new)
Paragraph 3r (new)
Amendment 37 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 3s (new)
Paragraph 3s (new)
3s. Recalls action 11N1 that should have been implemented by 31 December 2007; expects the Commission to act accordingly "To determine whether recovery and offsetting systems are working effectively, by identifying amounts recovered in 2005 and 2006 and their coherence with errors identified during controls the Commission will, in direct management, develop a typology of errors and the relationship with recoveries, financial corrections and adjustments to payments and for share management it will examine the reliability of national monitoring and reporting systems."; _________ 1 Report from the Commission to the Council, the European Parliament and the European Court of Auditors on the progress of the Commission Action Plan towards an Integrated Internal Control Framework (COM(2007)0086).
Amendment 38 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 3t (new)
Paragraph 3t (new)
3t. Is worried by Commission's statement in its Progress Report (COM(2008)0110) that only recoveries launched in 2008 will be recorded in the central financial and accounting system; urges therefore the Commission to record information in the central financial and accounting system on the control authority and the type of error and to retroactively encode all recoveries for the 1994-1999 and 2000- 2006 periods;
Amendment 39 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 3u (new)
Paragraph 3u (new)
3u. Asks the Commission in this light to give an assessment of the efficiency and effectiveness of multi-annual recovery systems and report on this in the 2008 or 2009 accounts;
Amendment 40 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 3v (new)
Paragraph 3v (new)
3v. Expects the Commission to present to Parliament an evaluation before 10 April 2008 of the quality of all the annual summaries received for Agriculture, Structural Policy and Fisheries; the evaluation should entail a breakdown per Member State and per policy area and should give an opinion on the overall assurance and overall analysis that can be drawn from them;
Amendment 41 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 3w (new)
Paragraph 3w (new)
3w. Regrets the diversity of information given by the Commission itself on financial corrections and recoveries and expects that the information provided for the discharge concerns exactly the same definitions of financial corrections as asked for the three-monthly reports;
Amendment 42 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 3x (new)
Paragraph 3x (new)
Amendment 45 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 4a (new)
Paragraph 4a (new)
4a. Urges the Commission to present its definition of a “Non-Governmental Organisation”, focussing not only on legal aspects but also on the way the non- governmental financing of these organisations is ensured;
Amendment 88 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 5
Paragraph 5
5. Considers that the Commission must react to fulfil important requests of the previous discharge 2005, which is not the case in the field of national declarations, where Parliament had asked the Commission to submit before the end of 2007 to the Council a proposal for a national management declaration covering all Community funds under shared management; regrets the Commission's tacit acceptance of Member States' collective irresponsibility, with the exception of Denmark, Sweden, the Netherlands and the UK, concerning the financial management of the European Union;
Amendment 89 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 6
Paragraph 6
6. Considers that the Commission must present complete and reliable figures for recoveries, specifying the exact budget line and year to which the individual recoveries relate; any other presentation makes a serious control impossible; is aware that the Commission to a large extent has to obtain this information via and from Member States; points out that, for this purpose, Parliament for the last three years has proposed national management declarations in order to put the Commission in a position where it is able to present this information and fill the transparency gap;
Amendment 92 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 9
Paragraph 9
9. Regrets the lack of clarity about legality, and the inevitable impact on the media, of the ECA's reporting as to EU funds being received by certain new beneficiaries (i.e. railway companies, horse riding/breeding clubs, golf leisure clubs and city councils) according to the eligibility rules; points out that from a formal legal perspective this is ultimately a discussion on eligibility rules; emphasizes that Parliament has however supported the ECA in the past, and will continue to do so, when commenting on efficiency and effectiveness in its Special Reports;
Amendment 93 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 9a (new)
Paragraph 9a (new)
9a. Reiterates that the ECA made the use of available audits and reports of national audit institutions an integral part of its new methodology; asks the ECA to inform the Committee on Budgetary Control of how it uses this information and asks further the ECA to give an opinion on the usefulness of the information obtained from the national audit institutions when drawing up its annual report;
Amendment 94 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 12
Paragraph 12
12. Notes that for the Structural Funds 2006 was the last year of the 2000 to 2006 programming period in which, by the end of the year, all commitments for that period had to be made;
Amendment 95 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 14a (new)
Paragraph 14a (new)
14a. Is concerned that the N+2 pressure spending might interfere with a proper undertaking of the winding-up procedures for structural programs and projects; points out that already for 2007, payments concerning Structural Funds have gone up by almost 50% in comparison to 2006; stresses that the Commission should ensure an effective winding-up procedure and emphasizes the important role that Member States have in this procedure;
Amendment 96 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 15
Paragraph 15
15. Regrets also that the spending rate for the Cohesion Fund, ERDF and ESF was less than expected in the new Member States, and linked to their difficulties in absorbing expenditure; asks the Commission to give a more detailed explanation for lower than nationally forecast spending on structural operations;
Amendment 97 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 17
Paragraph 17
17. Recalls that in the 2005 discharge resolution Parliament asked to the Commission to submit before the end of 2007 to the Council a proposal for a national management declaration covering all Community funds under shared management, based on sub-declarations by the various national bodies responsible for the management of expenditure; rejects the answer given by the Commission in the annex to its report on the follow-up to 2005 discharge procedure (SEC(2007)1185):"the Commission will not be taking the recommended action given the different governmental structure and management structures for EU funds under shared management of the 27 Member States, the development of a single standard declaration would not yield significant benefits. The Commission will however continue to support such initiatives taken by national administrations"; considers this response more than unsatisfactory, taking into consideration the situation with respect to Structural Funds and that more than 80% of the European Union's budget falls under what is called "shared management" and even more so, in light of the current situation with respect to Structural Funds, as established by the ECA in its 2006 Annual Report;
Amendment 98 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 18
Paragraph 18
18. WelcomeStrongly supports the initiative taken by some Member States (the UK, the Netherlands, Sweden, and Denmark) to approve the adoption of a national declaration on the management of Community funding and expresses concern at the fact that, despite these initiatives, most other Member States are resisting its introduction; urges the Commission to present possible viable advantages in terms of control relations between the Commission and those Member States that have introduced the above-mentioned initiatives; requests the Commission to report on a regular basis to the Committee on Budgetary Control on progress made concerning these provisions;
Amendment 100 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 19
Paragraph 19
19. Notes that the first annual summaries awere due by 15 February 2008 and; points out that Parliament considers these annual summaries as a first step towards the national management declarations; asks the Commission before the first reading of the 2009 budget to draw up a document analysing the strengths and weaknesses of each Member State's national system for the administration and control of Community funds and the results of the audits conducted, and to forward that document to Parliament and to the Council;
Amendment 102 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 20
Paragraph 20
20. Reminds the Commission about Parliament's previous criticism of the solidity of the basis on which the Commission claims to assume its political responsibility by its synthesis report, whereas the Commission lacks full insight into 80% of funds under shared management and the quality of annual activity reports vary; points out that the source of this lack of insight is two-fold: on the one hand insufficient monitoring and supervision by the Commission, and on the other an absence of concrete solutions and accountability at Member State level;
Amendment 103 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 21
Paragraph 21
21. Regrets the Commission'’s tacit acceptance of Member States'the collective irresponsibility of the majority of the Member States concerning the financial management of the European Union; welcomes and supports the initiatives taken by some Member States in this respect and calls on the other Member States to follow suit;
Amendment 105 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 32a (new)
Paragraph 32a (new)
32a. Disagrees with Commission’s statement in its latest progress report on the Action Plan for an Integrated Internal Control Framework (COM(2008)0110), that Actions 1, 3, 3N, 5, 8 and 13 are completed; points out that so far Parliament has been unaware of supporting documents or statements justifying such a statement; is forced therefore to seriously question whether these measures have been put in place, let alone whether they are implemented or have an impact on the progress of that Action Plan;
Amendment 108 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 33a (new)
Paragraph 33a (new)
33a. Highlights however that for the implementation of Actions 1, 3, 3N, 5, 10, 10N, 11, 11N, 13 and 15, the Commission is also dependant on cooperation with the Member States; stresses that Parliament fully supports these actions and urges therefore Commission to use every available tool at its disposal to implement them as soon as possible;
Amendment 109 #
Motion for a resolution
Heading before paragraph 35a (new)
Heading before paragraph 35a (new)
Synthesis Report
Amendment 110 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 35a (new)
Paragraph 35a (new)
35a. Finds it unacceptable that the Commission reduces the Eva’s audit results, which are based on widely accepted International Audit Standards, to "differences of opinion on the typology and impact of error and on the evaluation of systems deficiencies, and partly the different perceptions regarding the operation of financial correction mechanisms" (page 2, last paragraph of the report);
Amendment 111 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 35b (new)
Paragraph 35b (new)
35b. Is of the opinion that all reservations concerning a lack of assurance on the legality and regularity of Community spending should be reflected in Annual Activity Reports as well as in the Synthesis Report; found it therefore highly surprising in this light that three Directors-General decided only in 2006 to insert a reservation concerning the management and control of INTERREG, which, as noted by them, had already existed for some years (page 4, last paragraph of the report);
Amendment 112 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 35c (new)
Paragraph 35c (new)
35c. Is worried about the statements of the Internal Auditor in his first Overview Report which indicate that, despite some progress, half of the critical and very important recommendations have not been implemented before the target dates set (page 8, before last paragraph of the report); asks the Commission to put more emphasis on the implementation of these recommendations;
Amendment 147 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital K
Recital K
K. whereas its Committee on Budgets shouldParliament will take due account of the 2006 discharge results and recommendations during the next budgetary procedure,
Amendment 148 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital L
Recital L
L . whereas the Council is not the discharge authority and consequently its discharge recommendation should, in order to serve a constructive purpose,should aim to strengthen the reform efforts and the responsibility of the Member States to remedy the problems identified by the Court of Auditors (ECA) and secure better financial management in the European Union,