WRITTEN QUESTION E-0812/96 by Edith Müller (V) to the Commission (3 April 1996)

Subject: Implementation of EC budget headings dealing with human rights

1. A number of programmes in the sphere of human rights policy overlap one another. What steps does the Commission take to ensure that different financing procedures are not applied in the sphere of the EU's external human rights policy and that individual projects do not receive support from two different budget headings? In this connection, can the Commission please supply information on the effectiveness of the Working Party (Interservice Group) on Human Rights?

2. How does the Commission make its implementing and accounting procedures transparent in order to avoid costly corrections at a later date? What uniform criteria do the various Commission units employ in order to produce an ex ante reliability assessment of NGOs in terms of the substance of their work and correct accounting? How does it think the necessary steps could be taken to speed up the authorization and payment procedure?

3. In what way and how intensively does the Commission assess the substance of its human rights policies?

Answer given by Mr Van den Broek on behalf of the Commission (17 June 1996)

The Commission would first of all like to underline the difficulties of managing Article B7-700. Set up on Parliament's initiative, the Article contains both geographical and thematic items, the remarks to which often refer to the same subjects (e.g. indigenous peoples and the media).

1. Special measures have been taken to ensure suitable coordination, accountability and reporting of the use made of human rights budget headings:

- An interservice working party on human rights was set up in September 1991.

- Those managing the different headings of B7-700 coordinate their activities via ad hoc working parties set up for each project.

- Each project is the subject of a Commission decision.

- Two reports are published every year, one on the implementation of the human rights, democracy and development resolution of 28 November 1991 and the other on the use of human rights budget headings.

The latter contains details of the working party's activities, and in particular the identification of priorities, the criteria for selecting projects and the Union's positions in international and regional forums.

2. A running dialogue with non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and other recipients (civil associations and government institutions) and visits to projects provide the information necessary for assessing the reliability of individual NGOs. Throughout a project's lifetime NGOs are required to provide narrative reports and financial records of their activities. These are checked against the original workplan and budget, with particular attention being given to a project's compliance with the original objectives, cost-efficiency, impact and multiplier effect, and Community visibility. Any unexplained anomalies can trigger on-the-spot checks by the Commission and, possibly, the Court of Auditors.

The Commission also has independent experts conduct regular evaluations of the implementation of larger projects. Its delegations also check up on the projects financed.

3. In its communication entitled 'The European Union and human rights: from Rome to Maastricht and beyond' ((COM(95)567 final. )), the Commission set out the financial flexibility needed to ensure the effectiveness of human rights initiatives, a flexibility that is difficult to reconcile with the constraints inherent in the use of financial instruments (paragraph 100). One priority for the future will be to seek the best possible way of using different financial instruments to defend and promote human rights (paragraph 105). Parliament's cooperation is obviously crucial to this quest.

The above communication is just one significant example of the Commission's assessment of the field. What is now needed are the comments and suggestions of the Council and Parliament on the communication they received on 27 November last year.