Debate: Financial rules applicable to the general budget of the Union
Date: WEDNESDAY, 13 MARCH 2024
Speaker: Johannes Hahn
Language: EN

In that particular so-called trilogue there was an unusually close cooperation between Parliament and the Commission to convince very often the Council on what is necessary, what is possible, what is feasible and what is finally necessary in order to make things happen and to improve also the situation when it comes to financial matters.  Therefore, I think we should take a moment to look at the major advances that were agreed. The Commission proposal contains several hundred changes to the Financial Regulation and finally we managed indeed to find common ground on most of them. The final text contains very important improvements for EU citizens, beneficiaries and partners of the Union budget. We will better protect the Union budget because one of the biggest achievements, and it was already mentioned by Monika Hohlmeier, has been reached due to the extension of the early-detection and exclusion system – the famous EDES – to shared management starting from 1 January 2028. This date is definitely a compromise. It is not the date we wanted to have, but we have to accept it.  The 70 % of the Union budget not covered by this protection tool today will also be protected from going to beneficiaries convicted for fraud, corruption and other serious misconducts. We closed a very important loophole of the old system.  Another very important achievement is the compulsory feeding of the data-mining and risk-scoring tool for audit and control purposes as from 1 January 2028. The improved data-mining tool significantly reinforces the protection of the Union budget. However, let us not forget the next step for taking this protection to an even higher level to also make the use of the improved tool compulsory in the next MFF.  We will have more transparency for the public on who gets Union funding, because our improved financial transparency system means that information on beneficiaries of Union funding will no longer be fragmented over different websites, but concentrated in a single place. This ensures that citizens will be able to easily find information on the use of the Union budget. There will be less administrative burden for beneficiaries of Union funding and implementing partners. We achieved a lot of simplifications for grants and direct management. One such achievement is the introduction of a new category of very low value grants, following the Parliament’s request.  We will have clear rules for handling financing in crisis situation. Public procurement rules in cases of crisis will allow us to react more quickly, including on behalf of Member States, and rules to avoid professional conflicting interests make our procurements more credible.  We have also replied to many of this Parliament’s requests. For instance, the financial regulation will include a clear reference to respect EU values and new definition of non-governmental organisations is added. And we also agreed to include new references to gender and social rights in the context of programme performance.  There are many other important achievements, such as the agreement for deducting from competition fines that are confirmed the compensation to companies seeing a competition fine annulled by the European courts.  We also have a clear legal framework for Union participation in global initiatives in areas such as health, climate and education. So once again, my services are already working to ensure that everything will be ready once the recast will enter into force. And on this particular file, again, I would like to thank the Parliament for its extremely dedicated cooperation in this issue and the things we have achieved finally together.