| ECI proposal: Obligation for financial accountability of EU funds for ALL Member States |
| Status quo: 2013: There is no public control on € 240 billion of European emergency funds spending. |
| Cause: In the EU-Financial Regulation is no obligation for ALL Member States to submit an annual statement. |
| Goal of this ECI: Amendment of the law: the European Commission (EC) must oblige ALL Member States to give annual financial accountability for EU funds. |
| Argumentation for this ECI: The EU funds itself entirely with public money from the Member States, raised by EU citizens through taxation. We, the EU citizens, therefore have a direct interest in legitimate use of EU funds as it is OWER money. |
| Financial facts: On 7 February 2013 the Netherlands Court of Audit published the EU Trend Report 2013 (Dutch) with the conclusions (English): In 2012 their still was no independent monitoring and accountability on the European emergency funds. Also in the new EU Financial Regulation there still is no obligation for ALL Member States to submit an annual statement. An annual statement is only submitted by four Member States: Denmark, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and Sweden Due to the lack of annual statements there is no public control on € 240 billion of European emergency funds spending. The lack of public accountability by the Member States makes it impossible to structurally solve the problems in the use of EU funds. The legitimacy of the use of European subsidies has not improved. The European Court of Auditors (ECA) has never had a positive opinion on the legality of EU funds spending. |
| Recommendation by the Court of Audit of the Netherlands: The dutch government should be committed to promote greater transparency and public accountability of European money: – advocate that EU Member States that receive money from emergency funds have to draft an annual state declaration – advocate that the drafting of an annual state declaration will be mandatory for ALL Member States – advocate that these annual state declarations include also the use of emergency funds – promote that the ESM audit committee has sufficient staff / resources to perform independent scrutiny; – advocate that the ESM gets a mandate for independent external audit of the EFSF (European Financial Stability Facility) – advocate that the ESM gets a scrutiny mandate with regard to the money of the first Greek emergency funds. The public external audit and accountability of the EFSF and the first Greek loan program (over € 52 billion) is still not regulated. |
| Answers to parliamentary questions on EU Trend Report by the Minister of Finance, JRVA Dijsselbloem, April 9, 2013: With regard to the EU budget, the government advocates for greater accountability by States to improve reporting on the effects of EU subsidies, for strict enforcement of the grant and control rules by the European Commission and for more transparency about the legitimacy and effectiveness of the expenditure by Member State. This is done through the EU legislative processes and by annual Discharge Procedure. This also goes through frequent contacts with relevant EU institutions and Member States. An example is my recent letter to Commissioner Šemeta, in which the Netherlands urges on guidance to Member States in the implementation of the non-mandatory declaration (as included in the recently revised Financial Regulation of the EU budget), to which the Netherlands offers its services to the European Commission. (Dutch government – pdf – page 5) |
| EU-trend-rapport 2013 – persbericht (Dutch) EU-trend-rapport 2013 – onderzoeksrapport (Dutch) EU-trend-rapport 2013 – The member states’ accountability for EU funds (English) EU-trend-rapport 2013 – European Court of Auditors (1995-2012): eighteen negative statements of assurance (English) Discharge procedure for the EU budget European Court of Auditors’ website |
| Committee on Budgetary Control (EP) Do not hesitate to contact us (Mr. Michael Theurer) on any questions you might have. Contact the Committee on Budgetary Control by email at the following address: cont-secretariat@europarl.europa.eu or by fax: +32 2 284 49 07 (Brussels) +33 3 881 79976 (Strasbourg) |