EN C 417/176 Official Journal of the European Union 11 12 2019 Extensive use of external consultants 3 34 12 According to the Framework Financial Regulation for EU bodies, subsidised agencies may entrust technical expertise tasks and administrative, preparatory or ancillary tasks which do not involve either the exercise of public authority or the use of discretionary powers of judgment only where this proves to be indispensable The Financial Regulation of the Office as a fully self-financed agency, however, does not contain this limitation and allows the use of external consultants as long as the principle of sound financial management is respected 3 34 13 The Office has made extensive use of consultancy services For example, a four-year framework contract (FWC) procured in 2014 and with a market value of 30 million euros for consultancy services covering a broad range of activities, comprising audit services, project management, general consultancy and studies, had been fully used up within only two years and six months The succeeding FWC concluded in 2016 for a period of four years has an estimated market value of 80 million euros The number of external staff provided by service providers under these and similar contracts went up from around 250 in 2011 to a peak of more than 350 in 2014 falling to 215 at the beginning of 2018 (similar to some 20 % of the OfficeŐs statutory staff) Consultancy and non-consultancy services 3 34 14 The service description of the FWC contains a list of services However, this list is not exhaustive and other subjects of interest may arise The Court analysed a sample of specific contracts under this FWC in different domains We noted that, while a part of the services delivered under these contracts is consultancy (for example project management support, business process analysis), another part, is rather administrative support (for example secretarial support, administrative clerks preparing reports, support for internal and external communication activities) The latter services are mostly recurrent and should not be the subject matter of outsourcing because the staff performing these tasks are necessarily under the hierarchical structure of the Office In this case, it is not a service that it is provided but a loan of staff, which is strictly regulated and cannot be offered by consultancy companies 3 34 15 The Office has recognised that at certain points in time, external resources have executed limited tasks of a core-business nature, which initially began as non-core, due to the evolution of the tasks and responsibilities entrusted to the Office For this reason, in 2016 the Office started the re-internalisation of some tasks that were carried out by external resources, in order to retain essential knowledge and expertise by engaging contract staff For 2019, the Office plans the re-internalisation of 4 tasks (12 in 2018) The annual work programme and the annual activity report do not currently contain information on the full time equivalents provided by service providers executing tasks of a non-core business nature but embedded in the core business Such information would further increase the transparency for stakeholders in respect of the OfficeŐs own human resources and external human resources used by the Office 3 34 16 Furthermore, the Office partly uses this consultancy framework contract in a manner which, in practice, amounts to the assignment of temporary agency workers, instead of the provision of clearly defined services or products The assignment of temporary agency workers (interim workers) to perform precise tasks for a temporary duration in a user undertaking is subject to Directive 2008/104/EC on temporary agency work and to specific rules adopted by the Member States in the transposition of that Directive According to Spanish labour law, only registered temporary work agencies are authorised to provide interim workers to user undertakings (here EUIPO) The use of consultancy service contracts for the provision of labour is not compliant with the EU Staff Regulations and EU social and employment rules and exposes the Office to legal and reputational risks The Office should make sure that staff needs are covered in a regular manner either by addressing the need for statutory staff to the OfficeŐs budgetary committee, or by a legal and regular use of interim workers Use of fixed price specific contracts 3 34 17 Under the consultancy FWC, the Office mainly concludes specific contracts for fixed prices Such contracts are suitable when the deliverables and their timetable can be defined in the contracts, as the risk of performance lies with the contractor We examined a sample of fixed price specific contracts under the FWC for consultancy services and found that most of them did not contain clearly defined deliverables or timetables but defined the services to be delivered in a rather general way in order to reduce the number of contracts As a consequence, many of these contracts have been amended several times over their duration in order to adapt the agreed price to the services actually ordered and delivered The ordering of the services and the definition of the related deliverables are agreed between the Office and the contractor in communications which are not part of the contract We consider that it would strengthen the position of the Office towards the contractor if all deliverables for a fixed price were clearly defined in the contracts EN 11 12 2019 Official Journal of the European Union C 417/177 3 34 18 The OfficeŐs extensive use of so-called consulting resources represents a risk to sound financial management and the Office should analyse where such use is indispensable In particular, it should continue analysing where external resources are used for activities related to core-business tasks and continue to re-internalise such activities accordingly Furthermore, the OfficeŐs Annual Work Programmes and Annual Activity Reports should contain information on the number of full time equivalents from external service providers who are working on activities related to core-business tasks Fixed price consultancy contracts should clearly define the expected deliverables FOLLOW-UP OF PREVIOUS YEARSŐ OBSERVATIONS 3 34 19 An overview of the corrective action taken in response to the CourtŐs observations from previous years is provided in the Annex 
SV 11 12 2019 Europeiska unionens officiella tidning C 417/177 3 34 18 Myndighetens omfattande anvndning av s kallade konsultresurser utgr en risk nr det gller sund ekonomisk frvaltning och myndigheten br analysera var sdan anvndning r oundviklig Den br framfr allt analysera de fall nr externa resurser anvnds fr verksamhet relaterad till krnverksamhetsuppgifter och fortstta terinternalisera sdana verksamheter Vidare br myndighetens rliga arbetsprogram och rliga verksamhetsrapporter innehlla information om antalet heltidsekvivalenter frn externa tjnsteleverantrer som arbetar med verksamhet som r knuten till krnverksamhetsuppgifter De frvntade prestationerna br definieras tydligt i konsultkontrakt med fasta priser UPPF LJNING AV TIDIGARE RS IAKTTAGELSER 3 34 19 En versikt ver de korrigerande tgrder som har vidtagits som en reaktion p revisionsrttens iakttagelser frn tidigare r finns i bilagan