Activities of Bart STAES related to 2013/2195(DEC)
Shadow reports (1)
REPORT on discharge in respect of the implementation of the general budget of the European Union for the financial year 2012, Section III – Commission and executive agencies PDF (664 KB) DOC (374 KB)
Amendments (31)
Amendment 7 #
Proposal for a decision 1
Paragraph 3
Paragraph 3
3. Instructs its President to forward this decision, and the resolution forming an integral part of if, tot, to the Member States, the Ministers of Finance and Agriculture of the Member-States, the national Courts of Auditors, the Council, the Commission, the Court of Justice of the European Union, the Court of Auditors and the European Investment Bank, and to arrange for their publication in the Official Journal of the European Union (L series).
Amendment 29 #
Motion for a resolution
Heading 1
Heading 1
Agricultural and regional policy, subject to political reservationgrounds for binding commitments from the (future) Commission and Member States;
Amendment 40 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 2 a (new)
Paragraph 2 a (new)
2a. calls, therefore, on the Commission to apply Article 32(5) of the Financial Regulation (EU, Euratom No 966/2012 more strictly in case of a persistently high level of error, and consequently to identify the weaknesses in the control systems and take or propose appropriate action in terms of the possible simplification, the further strengthening of control systems and the redesign of programmes or delivery systems;
Amendment 41 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 2 b (new)
Paragraph 2 b (new)
2b. Is of the view that the risk of error of Union policy areas, in particular in the area of shared management, is higher if the related policies are particularly complex and Member States are reluctant to implement adequate control and reporting systems; urges all relevant actors involved in Union decision-making to simplify further, notably by drafting eligibility rules that are simple and verifiable, cutting red tape and devising appropriate and effective controls;
Amendment 51 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 5 a (new)
Paragraph 5 a (new)
5a. Notes that Commissioner Semeta in the discussions in the Committee on Budgetary Control made the following promises and proposals; - The DGs concerned will build up a new audit strategy based on the weaknesses found in in some Member States and regions year after year, which will trigger more preventive and corrective measures - Increase the random sampling based audits, introducing the necessary delegated acts in cohesion policies on net financial corrections which will be based on objective and transparent criteria applied without discretion, - Financial corrections will be detailed in the next annual report on the protection of the Union budget, - Annual reports from the GDs will include information on risk analyses and the impact of Member-States audit reports, - Conformity procedures will be shortened to two years, - For France and Portugal, comprehensive action plans will be established in the field of agriculture in among other the updating of their LPIS systems, - The introduction of a template and recommendations for national management declarations, - Making better use of RAL and limiting the period covered by pre- financing;
Amendment 52 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 5 b (new)
Paragraph 5 b (new)
5b. Calls on the college to endorse the proposals from the Commissioner;
Amendment 53 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 5 c (new)
Paragraph 5 c (new)
5c. Strongly suggests that the President of Parliament will send all these commitments to the candidates for the post of next president of the Commission asking them to endorse them;
Amendment 56 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 7
Paragraph 7
7. Notes that, in the new programming period 2014-2020, net financial corrections can and must be imposed in the event of serious shortcomings in the implementation of cohesion policy and will continue to be the standard in the area of agriculture;
Amendment 60 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 7 a (new)
Paragraph 7 a (new)
7a. Considers swift and correct applied net financial corrections an effective tool for protecting the Union budget and is of the view that recoveries and financial corrections have to be taken into account in any comprehensive assessment of the overall system of internal control; therefore asks the Court of Auditors to come to an agreement with the Commission on how to incorporate the impact of these corrective measures on the protection of the Union budget;
Amendment 69 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 9 a (new)
Paragraph 9 a (new)
9a. Asks the Commission to submit without delay a proposal on limiting if not banning replacement projects all together;
Amendment 91 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 13
Paragraph 13
13. Observes that in the 2012 financial year the error rate rose for the third time in succession even taking into account the new methodology of the Courts of Auditors;
Amendment 110 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 16 a (new)
Paragraph 16 a (new)
16a. Would like to be informed on the total amount of the Union's subsidies, grants and other financial instruments that were spent in setting up and improving the LPIS system since the decision was taken, if possible divided by Member-State;
Amendment 131 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 22
Paragraph 22
22. Calls, in the field of agricultural policy, for conformity clearance procedures to be completed in lessefforts to be made to accelerate conformity clearance procedures and to complete standard cases within less than two years, expects that as soon as possible the necessary legal instruments will be submitted leading to the fact that no clearance procedure can last for more than two years;
Amendment 138 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 24
Paragraph 24
24. Calls on the Commission to demonreport on the strate without delay that the problems identified in France and Portugal have been remediedof play of the implementation of the action plans for France and Portugal, before the deadline for amendments for the vote on the discharge in April 2014;
Amendment 143 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 26
Paragraph 26
26. Calls on the Commission, in the activity reports of the directorates-general, to indicate the percentage of Member States’report the extent to which Member States' control statistics or audit reports which have been examined, verified and validated and the depth in which this has been done;
Amendment 145 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 27
Paragraph 27
27. Calls on the Commission, in its annual activity reports, to indicate how its own risk analyses have influenced the use of its own audit capacities, which countries were concerned and whether the shortcomings were remedied; calls for more direct audits of random samples taken from national granting authorities and final beneficiaries by making extra staff available;
Amendment 152 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 30
Paragraph 30
30. Calls on the Commission to insert in the annual report on the protection of the EU budget a chapter on net financial corrections in the variousper Member States;
Amendment 170 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 33
Paragraph 33
33. Regards the newly elected Parliament as being in a position to investigate the reservationsguaranteed measures taken and to be taken in the fields of agriculture and regional policy and lift themto determine if appropriate progress is made; in order to make a well informed decision to grant or refuse discharge to the Commission on the execution of the budget for 2013 and 2014;
Amendment 187 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 40
Paragraph 40
40. Respects the Court’s method of taking the random sample with different priority countries and programmes each year for the ‘representative cross-section’; calls, however, in addition, for risk-based and programme-specific country reports starting with the annual report for 2013;
Amendment 216 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 69
Paragraph 69
69. Points out that gross pre-financing amounted to EUR 80.,1 billion at the end of 2012 and insists that unnecessary extended periods of pre-financing can lead to an increased risk of error or loss, is of the opinion that pre-financing can and should not exceed EUR 50 billion;
Amendment 246 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 100
Paragraph 100
100. Endorses the recommendation made by the Court of Auditors that the eligibility of land and in particular permanent pasture be properly recorded in LPIS (see paragraphs 3.13, 3.25 and box 3.3. of the annual report of the Court of Auditors for 2012);); urges the Commission, in cooperation with the Member States, to address the problems with regard to permanent pasture and ensure that it is correctly recorded in the LPIS; urges the Commission to inform Parliament on a six months basis on progress made;
Amendment 252 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 112
Paragraph 112
112. Reiterates its regret that the Commission followsapplied different methodologies to quantify public procurement errors in the policy areas of agriculture and cohesion, both of which furthermore are not in line with the Court of Auditors’ methodology, and calls on the Commission and the Court of Auditors to harmonise the treatment of public procurement errors in these two policy areasshared management without delay;
Amendment 260 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 126
Paragraph 126
126. Calls on the Commission to draw up an action plan in order to reduce the error rate in rural development not only by providing guidance and assistance to the Member States by means of best practice but also by means of systematic interruptions and suspensions of payments, by imposition ofng financial corrections geared to the seriousness of the errors, and by drawing up long term, short- term and ad hoc action plans;
Amendment 286 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 136
Paragraph 136
136. For this reason, reserves its position as regardstaking into account the substantial problems with the regularity of transactions and the effectiveness of systems in the common agricultural policy (direct payments and rural development); will lift this reservation only on the basis ofseeks a commitment to fully protect the budget of the European Union given by the relevant Commissioners-designate during the parliamentary hearing preceding their appointment as Members of the Commission in 2014 and on condition that convincing plans for doing so are presentedUnion to be given by all candidates for the post of President of the next Commission by endorsing the actions and commitments made by the actual commission and by striving for an error rate below the 2% threshold in all policy areas;
Amendment 404 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 209
Paragraph 209
209. Calls on the Commission to describe what measures need to be taken in the EU to control the market for tobacco leaves and, cut raw tobacco and mechanical equipment for the production of cigarettes, in order to combat illegal cigarette factories;
Amendment 407 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 212 a (new)
Paragraph 212 a (new)
212a. Calls on the European Commission to explore open source, well-audited solutions for e-mail and calendaring, including end-user softwares; reminds the Commission that also other parts of the stack not normally visible to end-users such as firewalls, web servers etc. can be considered from an open source, secure perspective if a public tender relies on functional specifications rather than brand-name products;
Amendment 408 #
Motion for a resolution
Heading 13 a (new)
Heading 13 a (new)
IT policies
Amendment 409 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 213 a (new)
Paragraph 213 a (new)
213a. Is concerned with the situation of effective captivity of the Union institutions with specific software-vendors; deplores that the Commission despite this realization has made no steps in 2012 towards preparing open, public tenders for ICT, based on transparent criteria and functional specifications rather than brand-names;
Amendment 410 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 213 b (new)
Paragraph 213 b (new)
213b. Recalls that the size of the SACHA II contract, and the full set of specific brand name products defined therein, was so large that only a very small number of contractors (two) could participate in the open, public tender; urges the Commission to prepare smaller open, public tenders to enable more actors to participate in such procurement and with a larger diversity of offers;
Amendment 411 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 213 c (new)
Paragraph 213 c (new)
213c. Suggests that the Commission invests in more in-house corporate ICT expertise in order to ensure that coordination and preparation of such projects does not become dependent only on external vendors; takes note of the fact that on-going consolidation projects between the different institutional systems can make it more difficult for the Commission to switch from one vendor to a different vendor, if the Commission does not ensure that document and database formats are based on open, interoperable standards;
Amendment 412 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 213 d (new)
Paragraph 213 d (new)
213d. Urges the Commission to ensure that any consolidation endeavours in the ICT architecture goes towards well- accepted, open standards that are used by multiple vendors and which can be implemented by open source software; recalls that it is easier to ensure that on- premise e-mail storage is not accessed by foreign interests, because of its geographical location;