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I Information

Court of Auditors

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SPECIAL REPORT No 5/2005

Interpretation expenditure incurred by the Parliament, the Commission and the Council, together with the institutions’ replies

(pursuant to Article 248(4), second subparagraph, EC)

(2005/C 000/01)

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ANNEX I: The specific provisions applying at the Parliament, the Commission and the Council

ANNEX II: The cost calculation method developed by the Court

The institutions’ replies

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

INTRODUCTION

THE AUDIT OBJECTIVE AND SCOPE

OBSERVATIONS

The procedures applied to avoid providing interpretation services which exceed the real needs

Parliament

Commission

Council

Procedures applied before the 2004 enlargement of the European Union

Procedures for the period after the enlargement

The capacity to provide all the interpretation services needed

The cost of interpretation

Cost calculations

Cost calculations made by the audited institutions

Cost calculations made by the Court of Auditors

Analysis of the cost of interpretation

Parliament

The DG Interpretation

Other questions affecting the cost of interpretation

Parliament

Late requests and cancellations

Commission

Cancellation or short duration of meetings

Council

Cancellation of meetings

Meetings invoiced at higher rates

The interinstitutional billing system of the DG Interpretation

The interinstitutional cooperation

Specific observations concerning the expenditure for freelance interpretation

The optimal ratio of permanent to freelance interpreters

The DG Interpretation

Parliament

The allowances of ACIs

Reimbursement of travel expenses and daily allowances

Parliament

The DG Interpretation

Comparison with other international organisations

The quality of interpretation

Parliament

Commission and Council

CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS

The procedures applied to avoid providing interpretation services which exceed the real needs

The capacity to provide all the interpretation services needed

The cost of interpretation

The quality of interpretation

Possible developments

This Report was adopted by the Court of Auditors in Luxembourg at its meeting of 22 September 2005.

For the Court of Auditors

Hubert WEBER

President

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(1)  Council Regulation No 1 of 15 April 1958 determining the languages to be used by the European Economic Community (OJ 17, 6.10.1958, p. 385/58), as amended.

(2)  Before the May 2004 EU enlargement, the DG Interpretation employed nearly 500 staff interpreters, the Parliament over 200 and the Court of Justice 33.

(3)  Freelance interpreters are also known under the French acronym AIC (Auxiliaire Interprète de Conférence).

(4)  The Staff Regulations of officials of the European Communities and the Conditions of employment of other servants of the European Communities are laid down in Council Regulation (EEC, Euratom, ECSC) No 259/68 (OJ L 56, 4.3.1968, p. 1), last amended by Regulation (EC, Euratom) No 723/2004 (OJ L 124, 27.4.2004, p. 1).

(5)  For statistical purposes, the DG Interpretation defines an interpreter day as two half-days during which an interpreter really did at least some interpretation (i.e. excluding travelling and all other activities). Because the DG Interpretation, the Parliament and the Court of Justice use different methods to calculate the number of interpreter days provided, the auditors have adjusted the figures for the other institutions to make them comparable with the DG Interpretation's figures in order to calculate the share of each institution in the total consumption and to calculate the cost per interpretation day.

(6)  To facilitate comparison, 1998 was chosen as the base year because 1998 and 2003 are both years preceding a year of Parliamentary elections and a renewal of the Commission. Moreover, both years had the same number of official languages (11), as the penultimate EU enlargement took place in 1995.

(7)  Active languages are languages into which interpretation is provided. Passive languages are the languages which can be spoken at the meeting. If the number of active and passive languages is not the same, the meeting has an asymmetric language configuration. Example: a 7/6 configuration is a configuration with 7 passive and 6 active languages.

(8)  Based on the prudent hypothesis that the problem affected only one delegation. The average cost of an interpreter day is shown in Table 4.

(9)  Algoé Consultants, Evaluation de la qualité des prestations fournies par le SCIC en matière d'interprétation, Lyon-Ecully, 26 June 2001.

(10)  Decision of the Secretary-General of the Council/High Representative for the Common Foreign and Security Policy No 56/04 of 7 April 2004 concerning interpretation for the European Council, the Council and its preparatory bodies, SN 1327/04 REV 1.

(11)  To ensure high quality interpretation, EU interpreters are, in principle, requested to provide interpretation only into their mother tongue. The high number of working languages makes it very difficult to find interpreters for all language combinations.

(12)  This is a translation of the French term mise à disposition (MAD) used at the DG Interpretation. All interpreters ordered and not cancelled at least six working days before the meeting are invoiced as BMA.

(13)  Direct costs are the remunerations of staff interpreters and ACIs, including travel and subsistence allowances.

(14)  Indirect costs are defined here as all other costs related to the interpretation activity: remunerations of management and staff responsible for planning, finance, human resources management and other administrative tasks, training, IT and office costs, etc.

(15)  The figures for the average full cost per interpretation day in 2003 (1 081 euro before tax and pension or 1 046 euro after tax and pension) are much higher than the cost per BMA because they include more overhead costs than those considered by the DG Interpretation and take account only of full interpretation days (or two half-days) for meetings which actually took place, whilst, as set out in paragraph 35, cancelled meetings and half-day meetings also count for the calculation of the cost per BMA as such meetings are charged to the meeting organisers.

(16)  Local ACIs have their declared professional domicile within less than 60 kilometres from the meeting venue.

(17)  PriceWaterhouseCoopers, Etude sur le coût total des interprètes fonctionnaires et des interprètes A.I.C., 5 October 2001.

(18)  In ‘GERI’ the unit of measurement of the employment of interpreters is the ‘half-day’. When a meeting is cancelled in GERI, the interpretation half-days allocated to that meeting are automatically shown as ‘suspended half-days’ (demi-journée suspendue) for each interpreter booked for the meeting. Should the available interpreter be reassigned to another meeting, then the ‘suspended’ code is replaced by the code of the new meeting. Hence, the sum of all the ‘demi-journées suspendues’ in GERI is the ‘net loss in interpretation resources’ expressed in half-days.

(19)  ‘Implicit’ stand-by duty differs from ‘explicit’ stand-by duty in that the latter corresponds to reserve teams included in the planning to replace absent interpreters. According to the established working conditions (‘Provisions applicable to staff interpreters’, SCIC (87)25), interpreters can be assigned to meetings for a maximum of 18 sessions (half-days of 3,5 hours) per period of two weeks.

(20)  The average cost per day available for interpretation is calculated as the total cost of the DG Interpretation after tax and pension calculated above (106 million euro) divided by the sum of interpreter days (101 000) and implicit stand-by duties (21 000).

(21)  Report of the ad hoc Working Group of the CITI, Synergies et économies d'échelle susceptibles d'être obtenues grâce à la coopération entre les services d'interprétation et de traduction des institutions et des organes communautaires, Brussels, 22.4.2002.

(22)  Article 15 of the Agreement governing the conditions of employment of conference interpreters remunerated by the day between the IACI and the Coordinated Organisations (Accord régissant les conditions d'emploi des interprètes de conférence rémunérés à la journée entre l’AIIC et les Organisations coordonnées) stipulates that, save as otherwise provided and mutually accepted, the rules governing travel expenses are to be those in force in each Organisation; this is confirmed by Article 2 of the Additional Agreement between the IACI and the Council of Europe, which stipulates that the conditions of travel and reimbursement of expenses applicable to Council of Europe staff on duty travel are to apply to interpreters.

Article 13 of the IACI-United Nations Agreement (2000-2005): ‘Except as may be otherwise provided in this Agreement, the travel rules applicable to the regular staff of the employing organisation on missions of similar duration shall be applicable to the travel of the freelance interpreters employed thereby. (...)’.

(23)  European Commission, Rules for implementing certain provisions of the Agreement (Modalités d'application de certaines dispositions de la Convention).

(24)  Provisions for implementing the Rules concerning freelance conference interpreters working for the Luxembourg-based institutions (Dispositions d'application relatives aux Réglementations concernant les interprètes de conférence free-lance travaillant pour les institutions de Luxembourg), § III. Travel expenses.

(25)  Article 9§2 of the Agreement mentioned in paragraph 8 states that ‘the daily subsistence allowance and supplementary daily allowance for interpreters who are not staff members of an institution shall be equal to the mission allowance paid to LA4 and LA8 officials in the institution which applies the most favourable rate. For interpreters whose contracts are covered by Article 78 of the CEOS, the rate shall be that in force in the institution for which they have been recruited’.

(26)  See ‘Terms and conditions of employment of free-lance interpreters at the OECD in 2003’.

(27)  See paragraph 23.

(28)  See also Article 14 of the IACI — United Nations Agreement (2000-2005): ‘When an organisation offers the interpreter a contract it shall endeavour to inform him of the arrangements it intends to make for transportation. If the interpreter accepts the contract, he shall accept whatever travel arrangements are made, unless his professional obligations prior to and subsequent to his contract are such as to render impractical, in the opinion of the organisation, participation in such arrangements. (...)’.

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ANNEX I

The specific provisions applying at the Parliament, the Commission and the Council

Parliament

Commission

Council

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(1)  Rules of Procedure of the Commission, C(2000) 3614 (OJ L 308, 8.12.2000, p. 26).

(2)  Rules to give effect to the Rules of Procedures of the Commission, C(2001) 1.

(3)  Advisory Committees, Management Committees and Regulatory Committees governed by Council Decision 1999/468/EC of 28 June 1999 laying down the procedures for the exercise of implementing powers conferred on the Commission (OJ L 184, 17.7.1999, p. 23) replacing Decision 87/373/EEC (OJ L 197, 18.7.1987, p. 33).

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ANNEX II

The cost calculation method developed by the Court

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(1)  According to Article 83(2) of the Staff Regulations a contribution corresponding to one third of the cost of financing the pension scheme is deducted monthly from the salaries of officials. In consequence, the ‘employer's contribution’ is twice the official's contribution.

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EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT'S REPLIES

While many meetings organised at the other two institutions referred to in this report may not require interpretation services, parliamentary meetings generally do (1).

Regular drafting of periodic reports to cultivate awareness among users has suffered on account of technical difficulties. The administration undertakes to improve the situation as from September 2005.

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(1)  Rule 138 of the Rules of Procedure of the European Parliament reads:

‘1.

All documents of Parliament shall be drawn up in the official languages.

2.

All Members shall have the right to speak in Parliament in the official language of their choice. Speeches delivered in one of the official languages shall be simultaneously interpreted into the other official languages and into any other language the Bureau may consider necessary.

3.

Interpretation shall be provided in committee and delegation meetings from and into the official languages used and requested by the members and substitutes of that committee or delegation.

4.

At committee and delegation meetings away from the usual places of work interpretation shall be provided from and into the languages of those members who have confirmed that they will attend the meeting. These arrangements may exceptionally be made more flexible where the members of the committee or delegation so agree. In the event of disagreement, the Bureau shall decide.’

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REPLIES BY THE COUNCIL

The General Secretariat of the Council welcomes the European Court of Auditors’ report on interpretation expenditure of the EU institutions, which could serve as a basis for further rationalisation of the use of interpretation facilities in the future.

Remarks on some individual points of the report

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THE COMMISSION'S REPLIES

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

INTRODUCTION

THE AUDIT OBJECTIVE AND SCOPE

OBSERVATIONS

CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS

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