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EU ministers fail committee test, but telecoms regulators
Parliament should not sign off spending by the European Council and the Council of Ministers for 2012, due to their repeated failure to co-operate with its efforts to check the accounts, the Budgetary Control Committee unanimously advised on Tuesday. But it should clear spending by the Riga-based Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications (BEREC), whose budget management, procurement and recruitment shortcomings, highlighted in April 2014, have now been corrected, it adds.
Parliament is the sole budget “discharge” (approval) authority vetting the EU institutions’ spending of the EU annual budget.
"Our decision was taken not because of irregular management of resources from the Council's side but because it refused to cooperate with Parliament in the discharge procedure. The discharge will not be granted until the Council accepts the Parliament's right to exercise its control powers to their full extent. The Parliament and the Council should start an open dialogue on this matter, which would certainly be a positive sign to the citizens of the European Union," said Tamás Deutsch (EPP, HU), the rapporteur in charge of the discharge of the Council and the European Council.
Parliament last postponed its approval of the Council's books on 3 April, to allow it more time to comply with the account vetting rules, which aim to enable taxpayers to see how EU institutions spend their funds.
In April, Parliament inquired in vain about the costs of the European Council’s new Europa building, the largely-rebuilt Residence Palace building, and “administrative modernisation” work under way at the Council.
As the Council has failed to reply either to the (earlier) recommendations of the European Court of Justice or to the European Parliament, the committee proposes that Parliament as a whole should refrain from granting the institutions a discharge. The Council and the European Council have failed each annual discharge test since 2011.
By contrast, the Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications (BEREC), should be granted a budget discharge for 2012, as it has now corrected shortcomings in budgetary management and public procurement and recruitment practices noted by the committee in April, say MEPs.
Next steps
Parliament as a whole will decide on the two issues at the October plenary session
