Debate: Discharge
Date: TUESDAY, 9 MAY 2023
Speaker: Johannes Hahn
Language: EN

2021 was a remarkable year for the Union budget. The European Funds played a critical role to help citizens, companies, regions and Member States to overcome the COVID-19 pandemic and its consequences, in this, also, the European budget is only 1% of the European GDP. In 2021, we started borrowing operations to finance NextGenerationEU, to create a claim and with record demand.  Major progress was also made in 2021 in setting up the Recovery and Resilience Facility. Despite the very challenging environment and the flexibility introduced in the management of some programmes, the Commission was able to deliver on its policy objectives and respond to multiple challenges. In this context, let me briefly outline the Commission’s actions on some of the key political priorities of the discharge report. 2021 was, as I said, that the first year of implementation of the Recovery and Resilience Facility for the Member States and the Commission. A robust control framework was set up to protect the Union’s financial interests. It was tailored to the unique nature of the facility as a performance-based instrument. We will take adequate actions to improve the control systems where necessary and to increase transparency on beneficiaries of the funds in line with the regulatory framework and the recent agreement reached on REPowerEU. Moving on to the rule of law situation in the Member States, the Commission continues to monitor information from all relevant sources to identify possible relevant breaches of the principles of the rule of law. The ongoing conditionality procedure against Hungary shows that the Commission is assuming its responsibilities. Our objective with the general regime of conditionality is that the Union budget is no longer at risk in cases when breaches of the rule of law principles affect or risk affecting the Union’s financial interests. We hope to achieve this as soon as possible through adequate reforms in Hungary.  Turning now to the digitalisation of systems for monitoring, reporting and the audit of European Union funding. As you know, the Commission has proposed in the revision of the Financial Regulation to improve the interoperability of data on recipients and beneficial owners of companies benefiting from Union funding. If adopted by the co-legislators, this should contribute to more transparency on recipients and increase the efficiency and quality of our controls and audits because if you have it tools in place, the traceability of actions is, as you know, much better and more effective and efficient.  Furthermore, the Commission has proposed to extend the scope of the early detection and exclusion system to funds under shared management and under the Recovery and Resilience Facility.  Finally, I would also like to highlight our actions to mainstream horizontal priorities such climate, biodiversity or gender equality in the Union budget. The Commission attaches utmost importance to this work. Important progress was been has been achieved fully in line with and even exceeding the timelines and milestones agreed by the co-legislators in the interinstitutional agreement.  Ladies and gentlemen, to conclude, I would like to emphasise that the Commission upholds the highest standards of transparency and accountability. The Commission remains committed to ensuring that the European Union budget and NextGenerationEU are spent in line with the applicable rules and deliver results on the ground.