Debate: Discharge
Date: TUESDAY, 27 APRIL 2021
Speaker: Ramona Strugariu
Country: Italy
Language: EN

Now a few words on each of these institutions or categories of institutions. On the Court of Justice, as a rapporteur of the European Parliament I would simply like to congratulate the Court on the functioning of their institution in 2019. Through its reference to the adaptability to new technologies, through the commitment to financial efficiency, to environment and most importantly to delivering high quality and timely judgments, the Court is one of the example institutions of the Union.  I would like to draw attention, however, to the fact that for good functioning of an institution, not only its financial but also its human resources need to be adjusted, keeping in mind the principle of maintaining high quality deliverables. And increasing the number of judges must be supplemented with an adequate increase in supporting staff allowing for an equitable division of labour and avoiding situations of burnout. I appreciate the efforts of the Court to increase efficiency and to ensure the mental health support of its employees, but outside support here is vital as well.  Transparency is an area where the Court has good results, but where there is still room for improvement, and it is my hope that in the future, CVs and declarations of interest of Members will be available on the Court’s website.  Moving to the Justice and Home Affairs agencies, in most of the cases I must say that I’m happy about the situation in 2019. As a message, we encourage EU agencies to work together to identify common aims – to cooperate in order to facilitate economies of scale, joint public procurement schemes, common strategies for cybersecurity, ecological transition or improving the ethical standards, are examples of areas where agencies are encouraged to cooperate. In the fields of ethics and transparency it is important that all agencies use declarations of interest, and this is a topic that I will come back to every single time until it is happening, because I consider it a key issue. It is not for an employee or a member of the management to make self-assessments of interest, and in terms of ethics and transparency this kind of assessment must be done by a third party, such as an independent EU ethics body. A remark on the European Asylum Support Office (EASO). After a few years of postponing the discharge for 2019 we do acknowledge the positive changes and the commitment of the new executive director for the sound management of the office. It also has been through a transformation process, a very good one. It has improved governance and internal control systems.  A few words on Frontex where we have decided to postpone the discharge in the committee. It is one of the most important decentralised agencies. Its scale, the mandate and the budget have all been upgraded by the new regulation in 2019 in order to respond to the necessity of having a strong and effective institution for managing the EU’s external borders. Implementing the new mandate is of course a challenge but this agency is a key component of the EU’s security and, with greater power, comes greater responsibility. The regulation actually takes note of that.  The management team of the agency must fully implement the provisions of this regulation without any hesitation. Here, however, through the hearings that we organise, exchanges of views, journalistic investigations – and there were many – after listening to the representatives of the agency, to the representatives of the Commission, it seems quite clear that there has been, first of all, a reluctance in fully implementing this mandate of the new regulation. There has been some proper management issues, and these are quite strong reasons, I would say, to postpone the discharge for 2019. I truly hope that the assistance of the Frontex Scrutiny Working Group that we constituted will help, that the management board and those responsible for the good governance of the agency will be able to correct the issues identified which led to the postponement of this year’s discharge.  We all aim for a strong and trustworthy Frontex and when there are problems I think that it is vital that we tackle these problems from the beginning as soon as they are signalled, fully addressing the issues that we identified, so that we do not repeat unsuccessful stories of a postponement for years and years that could affect deeply the mandate of the agency. Overall concluding remark, I would like to highlight that respect for human rights, high standards of ethics and integrity, sound financial management, the wellbeing of staff, and creating a safe environment for reporting wrongdoing are absolutely vital for the good functioning of any agency or EU body and we need to ensure at all times that they perform in such a way. This is also part of the mandate we have been entrusted with by European citizens.