Activities of Mikuláš PEKSA related to 2021/2054(INL)
Shadow reports (1)
REPORT with recommendations to the Commission on digitalisation of the European reporting, monitoring and audit
Amendments (23)
Amendment 13 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital L
Recital L
L. whereas some companies and natural persons operate in more than one Member State; and, therefore, receive EU subsidies in several Member States without the Commission being able to keep track of the total amount of money accumulated by each of these multinational companies;
Amendment 18 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital N
Recital N
N. whereas all these factors illustrate that there is an urgent need to create a standardisedtransparent standardised open-source Union-wide interoperable digital system for Member States‘ implementing authorities to report about the beneficiaries of CAP and structural and cohesion funds in order to enable national control and audit authorities, Union institutions and the public to obtain reliable information about the identity of final beneficiaries, how much they receive and from which funds;
Amendment 21 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital O
Recital O
O. whereas such a system should be open-source, ensure data format harmonisation, be machine readable, contain unique identification numbers, include search and sort functions and be interoperable so that data can be aggregated not only in respect of one policy or fund but across all policies, funds and Member States;
Amendment 24 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital Q
Recital Q
Q. whereas the Union budget should finance the development of such a system, which should be made available to Member States and regional authorities in charge of running and maintaining such reporting systems, as well as for journalist, civil society representatives and the general public, together with training courses for officials in charge of the daily operation of the systems;
Amendment 25 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital R
Recital R
R. whereas the reporting systems for CAP and structural and cohesion policies cannot realistically be constantly updated with the most recent information about company ownerships and thereby ultimate beneficiaries, the systems should therefore be automatically linked to public company databases and common databases about ultimate beneficiaries;
Amendment 28 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital U
Recital U
U. whereas data on recipients of funds from CAP and structural and cohesion funds should be available to the public for a minimum period of fiveten years;
Amendment 38 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 7 a (new)
Paragraph 7 a (new)
7 a. Believes that transparency of public funds ensures better accountability and enhanced trust from citizens in public authorities; recommends that all political parties in Europe operate with transparent bank accounts, which allows citizens to consult the transaction history and identify potential fraudulent behaviour such as corruption of public officials or conflicts of interests;
Amendment 41 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 8
Paragraph 8
8. Underlines that transparency about final beneficiaries will ensure that auditing, control and discharge authorities in national and regional administrations, the Commission, the Council and the Parliament will have much better and more accurate possibilities to ensure that money is being spent efficiently according to rules and policy ambitions;
Amendment 42 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 9
Paragraph 9
9. Underlines furthermore, that transparency about final beneficiaries will give journalists, civil society representatives and the general public much better possibilities to raise legitimate questions and concerns and thereby to expose potential cases of misuse or fraud of Union funds or problematic involvement from Politically Exposed Persons (PEPs);
Amendment 46 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 13 a (new)
Paragraph 13 a (new)
13 a. Believes that the review of the Financial Regulation should include a solid legal basis for mandatory use of open and standardized public procurement data, as well as to make budgetary control IT-systems mandatory, public and interoperable with national and regional databases;
Amendment 48 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 14
Paragraph 14
14. Stresses that the revision should ensure that it is possible to identify final beneficiaries of funds and therefore the revision should, among other things, contain an obligation for reporting systems to use standardised datasets, which include detailed information about the type of beneficiary and unique identifiers for all direct beneficiaries;
Amendment 49 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 14 a (new)
Paragraph 14 a (new)
14 a. Stresses that the Commission should ensure that the use of integrated and standardised reporting and monitoring tools is mandatory and fully implemented in the Member States and thus no longer operates solely on voluntary basis;
Amendment 52 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 16
Paragraph 16
16. Underlines that in situations where the direct recipient is a company which is owned by another company, it should be ensured that it is possible to identify the owners of the second company also, and that this obligation should continue to apply no matter how manyto all companies are involved in the ownership structure;
Amendment 58 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 20
Paragraph 20
20. Calls on the Commission to develop and make available to financial actors and entities responsible for tasks of budget implementation, including competent national and regional authorities under shared management, a system to ensure the digitalisation of European reporting, monitoring and audit for the CAP, cohesion and structural funds policies and other policies;
Amendment 60 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 21
Paragraph 21
21. Stresses that such a system shall be based on standardiseopen-source principles and use standardised datasets and measures to collect, compare and aggregate information and figures on the final recipients and beneficiaries of Union funding, for the purposes of control and audit;
Amendment 62 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 22 a (new)
Paragraph 22 a (new)
22 a. Highlights that such a system should be accessible to journalist, civil society representatives and the general public in order to facilitate research on the use of public funds and possibly uncover fraud, while respecting the GDPR rules;
Amendment 63 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 23
Paragraph 23
23. Asks for this system to be developed as quickly as possiblewithin two years and to be made available, free of charge, and mandatory for the reporting authorities in Member States;
Amendment 64 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 24
Paragraph 24
24. Underlines that the development of such a system should be accompanied with the enabling of national and regional authorities and relevant Union institutions, including the Parliament, the Commission, ECA, OLAF and EPPO where relevant, to ensure efficient checks on conflicts of interests, irregularities, issues of double funding and any misuse of the funds including the use of modern IT tools such as ARACHNE;
Amendment 65 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 26
Paragraph 26
26. Asks for the Commission to ensure that the necessary funding for such a system is made available in the Union budget together with appropriations for training and technical assistance for staff of national and regional authorities that will be using this system;
Amendment 67 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 29
Paragraph 29
29. Asks that information about recipients of Union funds is made publicly available for a minimum period of fiveten years;
Amendment 70 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 30 a (new)
Paragraph 30 a (new)
30 a. Highlights that such a system shall be effectively protected from cyberthreats; asks the Commission to invest in high level cybersecurity software and run periodic tests to identify potential vulnerabilities;
Amendment 71 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 31
Paragraph 31
31. Acknowledges that the system should respect rules concerning minimum amounts that will not be made publicly available; stresses that the responsible authorities should nevertheless always aggregate all the funds that are being paid to a single beneficiary and if the total amount that is being paid to any single beneficiary exceeds the minimum amount, information regarding all the payments made to that beneficiary should be maddisclosed to the public;
Amendment 72 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 32 a (new)
Paragraph 32 a (new)
32 a. Stresses that the existing Early Detection and Exclusion System (EDES) also plays an important role in the protection of the Union's financial interests; is concerned that it only applies to funds under direct management, which only represent about 20% of the EU funds; is equally concerned that economic operators identified by OLAF as abusing public funds are not automatically excluded from contracts financed by the EU budget or subject to financial penalties; urges the Commission to extend the scope of the EDES in the upcoming revision of the Financial Regulation in order to make it more effective;