ddrg/super_eurlex huggingface dataset:
Thursday 11 November 2010

ANNEX

DECISION OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND OF THE COUNCIL

of xxx

on mobilisation of the European Globalisation Adjustment Fund, in accordance with point 28 of the Interinstitutional Agreement of 17 May 2006 between the European Parliament, the Council and the Commission on budgetary discipline and sound financial management (application EGF/2009/021 IE/SR Technics from Ireland)

THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND THE COUNCIL OF THE EUROPEAN UNION,

having regard to the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union,

having regard to the Interinstitutional Agreement of 17 May 2006 between the European Parliament, the Council and the Commission on budgetary discipline and sound financial management (1), and in particular point 28 thereof,

having regard to Regulation (EC) No 1927/2006 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 20 December 2006 establishing the European Globalisation Adjustment Fund (2), and in particular Article 12(3) thereof,

having regard to the proposal from the European Commission,

Whereas:

(1) The European Globalisation Adjustment Fund (EGF) was established to provide additional support for workers made redundant as a result of major structural changes in world trade patterns due to globalisation and to assist them with their reintegration into the labour market.

(2) The scope of the EGF was broadened for applications submitted from 1 May 2009 to include support for workers made redundant as a direct result of the global financial and economic crisis.

(3) The Interinstitutional Agreement of 17 May 2006 allows the mobilisation of the EGF within the annual ceiling of EUR 500 million.

(4) Ireland submitted an application on 9 October 2009 to mobilise the EGF, in respect of redundancies in SR Technics and supplemented it with additional information up to 18 May 2010. This application complies with the requirements for determining the financial contributions as laid down in Article 10 of Regulation (EC) No 1927/2006. The Commission, therefore, proposes to mobilise an amount of EUR 7 445 863.

(5) The EGF should, therefore, be mobilised in order to provide a financial contribution for the application submitted by Ireland.

HAVE ADOPTED THIS DECISION:

Article 1

For the general budget of the European Union for the financial year 2010, the European Globalisation Adjustment Fund shall be mobilised to provide the sum of EUR 7 445 863 in commitment and payment appropriations.

Article 2

This Decision shall be published in the Official Journal of the European Union.
3.

Considers, on the contrary, that such income, stemming from the enforcement of EU competition policy, should be directly put back and reinvested in the EU budget; is determined to promote and defend this principle in the forthcoming negotiations on annual and multiannual budgets;
29.

Points out, as regards buildings policy, that Parliament is striving to rationalise the allocation of its existing space and to realise cost savings and economies of scale; points out that the KAD extension project currently under way, the cost of which is estimated at about EUR 549,6 million (at 2016 prices), will allow the geographical concentration of Parliament’s Administration in Luxembourg, and that all other buildings currently rented in Luxembourg will be gradually vacated, thus enabling substantial savings to be made once the project is completed; draws attention to the fact that the financing of this building project might require the setting up of specialised legal structures (a special-purpose vehicle), as the Financial Regulation prohibits direct borrowing, and that cost savings could be achieved if this project were to be financed directly from the budget or by means of a direct loan, which clearly shows the need for adjustments to be made to the Financial Regulation in order to guarantee more transparent and more direct implementation of future building projects;
5.

Notes that manroland before its insolvency employed 6,500 workers and that it was a modern manufacturer of machinery with modern know-how and attractive pay rates; considers that the break-up of this enterprise (with a loss of one third of its workforce) will cause a loss of skills, potentially affecting other employers and the regions concerned; considers that workers finding a new job will have to accept a lower wage level, which will in turn reduce their purchasing power and the cash-flow within the local economy; considers that the three regions will in addition lose one of the most influential employers, with no immediate prospect of an equivalent successor arising in the near future;
3.

Notes that the production plants of Antonio Merloni SpA, a producer of domestic appliances, were located in the Italian regions of Marche and Umbria, in particular the provinces of Ancona and Perugia; observes that in 2002, Antonio Merloni SpA, the fifth largest manufacturer of appliances in the Union changed its sales strategy and started selling its products directly through its own brands in 2006; notes that as a result of the global economic crisis, the company experienced financial difficulties, which were further exacerbated by the sudden tightening of conditions for accessing financial credit; notes that the downturn in production, which had been following the downward trend at a European level, combined with financial constraints, resulted in the winding-up of the business activities of Antonio Merloni SpA; notes that a total of 2 217 workers were made redundant, of whom 700 were employed by QA Group SpA; notes that this application, therefore, covers the 1 517 workers who are unemployed as a result of the closure of Antonio Merloni SpA;
—

having regard to Regulation (EU, Euratom) No 966/2012 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 25 October 2012 on the financial rules applicable to the general budget of the Union and repealing Council Regulation (EC, Euratom) No 1605/2002 (1), and in particular Article 18 thereof,
10.

Acknowledges that the Agency will carry out an assessment to identify its degree of exposure with a view to strengthening or supplementing its policy on the management and prevention of conflicts of interests and with a view to assessing its implementation, monitoring and reporting during the first quarter of 2014 on the basis of the Commission’s Guidelines on the Prevention and Management of Conflicts of Interests in EU Decentralised Agencies; calls on the Agency to inform the discharge authority of the assessment results once available;
11.

Acknowledges that the Court of Auditors tested a sample of five operational procurement procedures; notes that for the grants, the average number of proposals received was only one per call but that this reflects the highly specialised nature of the calls and the outcome of the Union fusion programme in creating a European research area in fusion with minimal duplication of efforts and close collaboration among teams active in one field; observes that the latter manifests itself in pan-European consortia essentially behind all proposals in response to F4E calls; urges the Joint Undertaking to develop an Action Plan with concrete measures and deadlines to maximise competition and to follow the value-for-money principle in the preparation, publication, evaluation and contract and management phases of the call;
48.

Reiterates that the lack of flexibility within the budget has been recognised as a weakness by certain agencies, which suggests that savings could be made if there was enough flexibility within the budget from title to title; notes that the new FFR stipulates the same rules as those applicable to institutions by virtue of the general Financial Regulation, – the director of an agency will have the possibility to make transfer appropriations up to a maximum of 10 % of the appropriations for the year shown on the line from which the transfer is made from one title to another, and without limit from one chapter to another and from one article to another;
3.

Acknowledges from the Agency that: — the level of title III carry-overs, excluding fees and charges, was considerably reduced in 2012 to EUR 6 200 000 (46 %), — work instructions for both fixed assets management and inventory management have been adopted and a full inventory was carried out in 2012, which resulted in the disposal of a number of fully depreciated assets, — in order not to hold cash funds in only one bank, a negotiated tender for opening bank accounts was launched in 2013, based on strict criteria as regards the credit rating of the prospective banks; notes that the selected bank has an excellent credit rating and once a contract is signed, the Agency’s cash funds will be transferred to this bank depending on the balance between credit risk and interest rate, — measures and controls have been put in place to allow for the recruitment of the necessary experts from the industry, at the same time avoiding potential conflicts of interest situations; observes, moreover, that the conflicts of interest training is finalised and that regular training is put in place for newcomers;
30.

Takes note of the creation of the new Directorate-General for Parliamentary Research Services on 1 November 2013; recalls that it was created in a budgetary neutral way by redeployments from DGs PRES and IPOL and that the new Directorate-General will not require new human or financial resources in 2015; calls for information on the number of posts in the new Directorate in August/September 2014, including the planned transfer of posts from the two European Advisory Committees, as compared to the situation in January 2014 and asks for a breakdown of how its external expertise resources are to be used, which should be presented to the Committee on Budgets in due time for the preparation of the Parliament's reading of the budget for 2015;
EN Official Journal of the European Union C 294/77

P8_TA(2014)0094

Mobilisation of the EU Solidarity Fund: Floods in Serbia, Croatia and Bulgaria

European Parliament resolution of 17 December 2014 on the proposal for a decision of the European Parliament and of the Council on the mobilisation of the European Union Solidarity Fund, in accordance with point 11 of the Interinstitutional Agreement of 2 December 2013 between the European Parliament, the Council and the Commission on budgetary discipline, on cooperation in budgetary matters and on sound financial management (Floods in Serbia, Croatia and Bulgaria) (COM(2014)0648 — C8-0223/2014 — 2014/2161(BUD))

(2016/C 294/31)

The European Parliament,

— having regard to the Commission proposal to the European Parliament and the Council (COM(2014)0648 — C8-0223/2014),

— having regard to the Council Regulation (EC) No 2012/2002 of 11 November 2002 establishing the European Union Solidarity Fund (1), and in particular Article 4(3) thereof,

— having regard to Council Regulation (EU, Euratom) No 1311/2013 of 2 December 2013 laying down the multiannual financial framework for the years 2014-2020 (2), and in particular Article 10 thereof,

— having regard to the Interinstitutional Agreement of 2 December 2013 between the European Parliament, the Council and the Commission on budgetary discipline, on cooperation in budgetary matters and on sound financial management (3), and in particular point 11 thereof,

— having regard to the Joint conclusions agreed by the Parliament and the Council on 8 December 2014,

— having regard to the report of the Committee on Budgets (A8-0075/2014),

1. Approves the decision annexed to this resolution;

2. Instructs its President to sign the decision with the President of the Council and arrange for its publication in the Official Journal of the European Union;

3. Instructs its President to forward this resolution, including its annex, to the Council and the Commission.

(1) OJ L 311, 14.11.2002, p. 3.

(2) OJ L 347, 20.12.2013, p. 884.

(3) OJ C 373, 20.12.2013, p. 1.
19.

Acknowledges that the ESFS is still in a setting-up phase and stresses that the tasks already entrusted to the Authority, as well as future tasks envisaged in on-going legislative work, require an adequate level of staff and budget to allow for high-quality supervision; emphasises that the need to combine additional tasks with additional resources should always be carefully considered; stresses, however, that any potential increases in its means should be preceded and/or complemented by adequate rationalisation efforts, wherever possible; highlights the Authority's coordinating role and the need to closely cooperate with national supervisory authorities to fulfil its mandate;
7.

Acknowledges from the Joint Undertaking that in addition to the improvements to its ex post audit strategy, an action plan was submitted which aims to remedy the deficiencies identified by the Court in its qualified opinion; acknowledges receipt from the Joint Undertaking of the last update with regard to the ex-post audit implementation in the Joint Undertaking; awaits the Court's opinion on the new formula proposed for the calculation of an estimated residual error rate in the Joint Undertaking's transactions; notes that the implementation of the action plan commenced in 2014; looks forward to the successful implementation of the entire action plan as well as to the Court's opinion on its outcome; points out that difficulties may arise as to the boundaries between NFA's sovereign authority and the Joint Undertaking's authority; calls on the Joint Undertaking to provide a first interim evaluation report on the implementation of the action plan;
6.

Notes from the Court's report that the overall level of committed appropriations in 2013 was 99 %, indicating that commitments were made in a timely manner; welcomes the further reduction of the overall level of carry-overs from EUR 2 500 000 (32 %) in 2012 to EUR 2 200 000 (29 %) in 2013; points out that those carry-overs mainly relate to title III (operational expenditure) with EUR 2 000 000 representing 56 % of the corresponding committed appropriations; acknowledges that those carry-overs mainly concern procurement procedures that were concluded late in 2013 due to reasons mostly beyond the Institute's control, such as a delayed decision by the Presidency of the Council of the Union regarding a subject of study;
13.

Acknowledges from Eurojust that the CVs of the members of its Management Board and its Administrative Director are publicly available on its website; notes that the approval of the templates for the declarations of interests by the Management Board is pending and calls for their adoption by the end of July 2015; calls on Eurojust to inform the discharge authority on the progress made in this regard as soon as possible and urges it to publish the declarations of interests of its staff and experts by the end of October 2015;
4.

Welcomes the fact that an additional EUR 1 000 million compared to the initial Commission proposal will be financed through the Global MFF margin for commitments, stemming from margins left available in the 2014 and 2015 budgets, thus reducing the redeployment from CEF and Horizon 2020; recalls that, according to Article 14 of the MFF Regulation, resources under the Global MFF Margin for commitments will only be made available as of 2016;
3.

Notes that in recent years the distribution of ICT sector employment between the Union and other economies has developed to the detriment of the Union and underlines that while in 2008, the technology industry employed a total of 326 000 people in Finland, the number of people employed by such companies in 2014 was 276 000, which corresponds to an average decline per year of about 3 % (10 000 workers); points out that the events giving rise to these redundancies are the developments affecting Nokia in recent years, which have had a major impact on the ICT sector in Finland; whereas developing and designing operating systems for Nokia mobile phones used to employ thousands of Finnish people and these functions have now been transferred to countries outside Europe; points out that these redundancies will further aggravate the unemployment situation in the ICT sector in regions struggling with a high unemployment rate;
6.

Reminds the Court that Parliament, the Council and the Commission agreed in point 54 of the common approach on decentralised agencies from 2012 that all aspects of outsourced external audits ‘remain under the full responsibility of the ECA, which manages all administrative and procurement procedures required and finances these, as well as any other costs associated with outsourced external audits, from its own budget’; deeply regrets that the new audit approach of involving private sector auditors resulted in an augmented administrative burden for the decentralised agencies; notes with concern that this resulted in an increase of administrative burden by 85 %, to more than 13 000 hours compared to the previous audit managed by the Court, equating to an average of 3,5 full time equivalents; regrets that the time spent on procurement and administration of the audit contracts created more than 1 400 hours of additional work for the decentralised agencies, and that the total additional expenditure of external private sector audits in 2014 amounted to EUR 550 000; reiterates its call to the Court to follow the agreed common approach and contract and pay for agencies' external auditors and provide better guidance to private auditors so as to significantly reduce the administrative burden;
13.

Notes that the Agency already established and implemented a comprehensive policy on the prevention and mitigation of conflicts of interest as well as on ‘Gifts and Hospitality’ in its ‘Code of Conduct for the staff of EASA’ (CC); notes that this policy includes inter alia the establishment of an Ethical Committee to assess the completed declarations of interest and to deal with any subject related to the CC, as well as the establishment of mandatory training on the CC for all of the Agency’s staff members; acknowledges that a code of conduct which includes a policy on prevention and mitigation of conflicts of interest has also been adopted for the members of the Agency’s Board of Appeal and the members of its Management Board; notes that the Agency is set to review and update its policies on management of conflicts of interest and calls on the Agency to report to the discharge authority on the status of the policy update;
4.

Notes with concern that the complexity of the Joint Undertaking’s activities implies that the amount of the contribution to the construction phase of the project by the Joint Undertaking is exposed to significant risks of increase; observes that those risks mainly result from changes in the scope of the project deliverables and delays in the current schedule which was considered to be unrealistic and that the release of a new ITER Organisation action plan, including scope, schedule and costs (the ‘new ITER action plan’), by the Council of the ITER Organisation (‘ITER Council’), planned for June 2015, was postponed until November 2015 and is now scheduled for mid-2016; notes, furthermore, that the delay for the construction phase of the project was estimated by the Joint Undertaking at the time of the audit to be at least 43 months; acknowledges that the Joint Undertaking is already adopting a stringent policy regarding the above and is refraining from proceeding with procurement actions until the specifications for contracts are sufficiently stable; notes, moreover, that the Joint Undertaking has reviewed the procurement schedules for all systems to ensure that the activity durations are correct and that the planned work is achievable given the available resources within the organisation (3);
85.

Takes note of the report on the evaluation of the Statute for parliamentary assistants drawn up by Parliament and submitted in July 2015; deplores the fact that the report goes no further in practice than to assess the results from the APA-People application and highlight certain problems the administration has encountered in implementing the provisions of the Statute and with the internal implementing rules; expresses its unhappiness and total disagreement with certain value judgements made in the second part of the report; hence considers the evaluation to have failed to achieve its objectives, except in the case of the APA-People application; calls on Parliament, as a result, to conduct a comprehensive and in-depth evaluation of the Statute and the implementing rules before the end of this year, with that evaluation also covering all those aspects of a legal nature causing difficulties, so that the foundations can be laid for improving, adjusting and reforming individual rules in the near future; calls also for the official representatives of the APAs to be involved in this process, especially bearing in mind the very positive role they played in the first review;
3.

Notes that, according to the Court's report, the Joint Undertaking did not assess the quality of the audit reports received from the NFAs concerning the costs related to completed projects; notes furthermore that, after an assessment of the audit strategies of three of the NFAs, it was not possible to conclude whether ex post audits are functioning effectively due to different methodologies used by the NFAs which did not allow the Joint Undertaking to calculate either a weighted error rate or a residual rate error; notes also that ECSEL JTI confirmed that its extensive assessment of the national assurance systems concluded that they can provide reasonable protection of the financial interests of the Joint Undertakings' members;
EN Official Journal of the European Union C 224/225

P8_TA(2016)0474

Mobilisation of the EU Solidarity Fund to provide for payment of advances in the 2017 budget

European Parliament resolution of 1 December 2016 on the proposal for a decision of the European Parliament and of the Council on the mobilisation of the European Union Solidarity Fund to provide for the payment of advances in the general budget of the Union for 2017 (COM(2016)0312 — C8-0245/2016 — 2016/2119(BUD))

(2018/C 224/53)

The European Parliament,

— having regard to the Commission proposal to the European Parliament and the Council (COM(2016)0312 — C8-0245/2016),

— having regard to Council Regulation (EC) No 2012/2002 of 11 November 2002 establishing the European Union Solidarity Fund (1),

— having regard to Council Regulation (EU, Euratom) No 1311/2013 of 2 December 2013 laying down the multiannual financial framework for the years 2014-2020 (2), and in particular Article 10 thereof,

— having regard to the Interinstitutional Agreement of 2 December 2013 between the European Parliament, the Council and the Commission on budgetary discipline, on cooperation in budgetary matters and on sound financial management (3), and in particular point 11 thereof,

— having regard to the results of the trilogue of 17 November 2016,

— having regard to the report of the Committee on Budgets (A8-0323/2016),

A. whereas, in line with Regulation (EU) No 661/2014 of the European Parliament and of the Council (4), an amount of EUR 50 000 000 is made available for the payment of advances through appropriations in the general budget of the Union

1. Approves the decision annexed to this resolution;

2. Instructs its President to sign the decision with the President of the Council and arrange for its publication in the Official Journal of the European Union ;

3. Instructs its President to forward this resolution, including its annex, to the Council and the Commission.

(1) OJ L 311, 14.11.2002, p. 3.

(2) OJ L 347, 20.12.2013, p. 884.

(3) OJ C 373, 20.12.2013, p. 1.

(4) Regulation (EU) No 661/2014 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 15 May 2014 amending Council Regulation (EC) No 2012/2002 establishing the European Union Solidarity Fund (OJ L 189, 27.6.2014, p. 143).