Debate: Discharge
Date: TUESDAY, 9 MAY 2023
Speaker: Ramona Strugariu
Country: Italy
Language: EN

In spite of the pandemic still affecting their work in 2021, the European justice and home affairs agencies have shown great adaptability and resilience, ensuring continuity of operations and in many cases surpassing their initial goals: eu-LISA maintained the availability of its systems in over 99% of the time, the Fundamental Rights Agency surpassed its targets for delivered publications, while CEPOL successfully moved some of its activities online, engaging even more people in its trainings. Our agencies must set an example of transparency, accountability, responsibility and good governance. While we continue to ask our agencies to optimise their work, we also need to provide them with the adequate funding and human resources that they need. Such resources should not be allocated only to the goal of implementing their operational mandate, but also great attention should be paid to how we allocate resources on the administrative side. Procurement still represents the area that generates the largest volume of irregularities. Agencies need good procurement officers hired on the appropriate grade, reflecting their responsibilities. Now about a few sensitive issues. Frontex, the largest of the EU decentralised agencies, which is unique in its mandate as to the operations of its standing corps. The agency has been going through a very difficult period caused by serious mismanagement at its very top last year. The report published by OLAF concerning the managerial activity of the previous executive director increased the shock wave initially created by journalists’ reports of violations of human rights and mismanagement in the agency. Nevertheless, after its resignation, its valuable and consistent presence mattered a lot in support during the war at our borders, and I would like to commend that. Frontex has now a new executive director who has a lot to deliver. The mandate of the agency is clear and sets out a strong framework to be used for the protection of our external borders. We emphasised this when we gave him our support and we shall offer this support towards the clean implementation of this mandate. The new director has a task to continue the good work of the interim management to fundamentally challenge and change the previous organisational culture in the agency, to respect and show commitment to upholding fundamental rights and to fully regain citizens’ trust in the agency. This will take time, but it is worth a fresh start. As for the EUAA, our asylum support agency, we keep a close eye on the developments concerning the OLAF investigation and shall analyse its results once it becomes available. All recruitment, especially that in case of senior staff, must be conducted with utmost responsibility and in full compliance with EU rules. Through the discharge reports that I am rapporteur for in this cycle, the aim was to acknowledge effort and good results while also clearly stating areas of improvement. We need to further strengthen our coordinated European response to the main challenges we are faced with. Our agencies, together with the other institutions, are our business card for Europe. Pandemic, war, economic hardship, energy crisis, climate emergency – we are stronger if we can face them all better and united. Long live European Union.