Debate: Discharge
Date: TUESDAY, 27 APRIL 2021
Speaker: Ana Paula Zacarias
Language: EN

On 1 March, Mr Rui Alves, our financial counsellor, had the honour of presenting to the Committee on Budgetary Control the Council’s recommendation to grant discharge to the Commission for the financial year 2019. I hope this plenary will come to the same conclusions. Honourable Members, allow me to remind you that the Council recommendation to grant discharge of the Commission was adopted on 16 February 2021, along with discharge recommendations for decentralised agencies, executive agencies and joint undertakings. The debate on the Committee on Budgetary Control showed that the Council and Parliament share the same concerns regarding the management of the EU budget.  We also share, I’m sure, the point of view that our recommendations should be followed up and implemented by all actors without delay. In this context, I would like to draw your attention to three elements of the Council recommendation.  First, we have after a number of years, an adverse opinion on the expenditure. The Council regrets this. It also regrets the fact that the overall error continues to be above materiality, above 2%. However, given the improvements observed, notably in sub-heading 1b (cohesion), and in natural resources, including agriculture, the overwhelming majority of Member States still thought that it would be appropriate to grant discharge to the Commission for 2019.  Secondly, our recommendation this year has a different structure that mirrors, to a certain extent, the separate report by the Court on the performance of the spending programmes under the EU budget. We see evaluating performance as a useful exercise and we call on both the Court and the Commission to continue to work as necessary to assess the true value delivered to EU citizens. Discussions continue about the form and the scope of this exercise, and the Council follows them with great interest. Certainly, while 2019 is not the last year of the previous multiannual financial framework, we need to acknowledge that the COVID-19 crisis created a fault line. The huge implications for 2020 and for the current MFF could not be ignored in the Council recommendation. We are worried about its effect on the availability of payment appropriations and on the exposure of the EU budget. Therefore, we call on the Commission to closely monitor the payment needs and reassess the mechanism available to mitigate further exposures, taking into account the context of the crisis and the measures adopted to fight this effect. There is one more thing I would like to point out in the Council’s recommendation before I end my speech. We ask the Court again to help us compare the situation between years within each policy area. We have heard the arguments of the Court about the costs of proper sampling an error rate calculation in all headings, but we still think this should be the main drive of the action of the Court, to present the Council and Parliament, and, of course, EU citizens, a concrete, comparable picture of the way EU money is managed. Finally, let me conclude by thanking you, honourable Members of Parliament, for all your thorough work on discharge. I would also like to extend my thanks to the Commission and to the Court of Auditors and all those who contribute to the good management of EU funds.  We may have different positions, but we all share the same goal: to show Europeans that the Union works, that the money spent by the Union is not wasted and is used to achieve tangible results that could not otherwise be achieved. It is not easy, and there is certainly room for improvement, so let’s keep up the good work.