Bättre, men inte bra nog
I veckan presenterade Europeiska revisionsrätten sin årsrapport om EU:s budget för 2010 inför Europaparlamentet i Strasbourg. Som parlamentets föredragande inledde jag debatten efter revisionsrättens ordförande Caldeira och kommissionär Semeta. Dessa menade att felprocenten i EU:s budget ligger på en stabil nivå också för 2010, och jag svarade att stabilt inte är gott nog. Parlamentet var missnöjt förra året och vi ledamöter kommer att vara missnöjda i år igen. Framförallt uttryckte jag oro över hur felen i sammanhållningspolitiken ökar och hur avancerade så kallade ”financial engineering instruments” för stödsystemen försvårar för kommissionen att ha koll på sina utgifter. Och kanske än mer alarmerande; inom ramen för budgetkrisen har EU utfärdat krisfonder som använder EU-budgeten som finansiell säkerhet, vilket innebär att EU, medlemsländerna och i slutändan skattebetalarna utsätts för stor finansiell risk…
Som ansvarig för parlamentets granskning av budgeten har jag utan tvekan ett långt men intressant arbete framför mig. I detta klipp kan ni se mitt anförande i plenum, och nedan mii pressmeddelande som gick ut från parlamentet.
”Discharge 2010: Cohesion Funds and transparency of Financial Stability Facilities in focus.
”The Court of Auditors report shows that the situation for error rates remains stable, but stable is not good enough. We were not happy last year so we cannot be happier this year”, says Christofer Fjellner MEP, Parliament’s Rapporteur for the discharge of the Commission for fiscal year 2010.
”Our task is to look for ongoing problems. This year we have to focus on cohesion funds, since error rates have gone up from 5.5 to 7.7 per cent. Last year Parliament did a good job by putting pressure on the Commission to create better systems to suspend and interrupt erroneous payments. This year, we will follow up by working on resumptions of payments after interruptions. How does this work, and how can it be improved?”
”Another main focus will be on Financial Engineering Instruments. My preliminary position is that there currently exists a considerable accountability gap concerning FEIs in the cohesion area and possibly also in other policy areas. The question is really how the Commission can manage and Parliament give discharge on such an uninformed basis. What control does the Commission have over funds in those instruments?”
”And we must not forget the responsibility of Member States. The Court of Auditors concludes that sufficient information was available for Member States to correct 58 per cent of the transactions affected by error”, says Fjellner.
”An additional concern for the audit report will be the current financial and budgetary crisis in Member States that touches on the EU budget. The Auditors underline that there is an increased risk of gaps of accountability and public audit through the establishment of facilities to support some Member States. The two facilities, the balance of payments facility and the European Financial Stability Facility have ceilings of €50 and €60 bn respectively, amounting to a total of €110 bn (in 2010). As payments from the annual EU budget in 2010 amounted to €122 bn this means the EU budget is highly exposed to financial risks potentially amounting to almost one annual budget. This shows how highly leveraged the EU budget currently is. This will definitely be taken into account for this year’s discharge report”, Fjellner concludes.
