Committee on Budgets Ordinary meeting Joint meeting Committee on Budgetary Control

07:16 - 08:46

Nils Ušakovs

But let's keep in mind that again, availabilities are insignificantly different from zero. You have to keep it in mind when you will be drafting the amendments. We can understand that we have very tough choices ahead of us. That means that we need to be prepared to choose and prioritize.

We cannot have priorities everywhere. It's much better to target limited resources in a few places to make a real difference than little amounts everywhere. The context is not easy, but we must be honest with each other. We must think about the choices we face and how we best use the options we have, limited options. I have listed priorities in the guidelines that we adopted in April, and I want the budget to focus on people, our social model, our values, on the economy and its competitiveness in the face of strategic challenges, on the planet and making sure we leave a more sustainable environment where people can strive.

And I'm also arguing for a special focus on regions bordering Russia and Belarus as they face special dire circumstances. So, opinion-giving committees will have until 3rd of September at midday to table budgetary amendments to the draft budget and until 11th of September for the opinion to the draft resolution accompanying the budget. The votes will take place in October. Now I really want to hear your reaction to the draft budget and your key priorities. Thank you, colleagues.

Thank you. And we are waiting for the amendments being reasonable.

08:46 - 09:02

Andreas Schwab

Thank you very much, colleague Uzakovs, that's very kind.

And now I would like to give the floor to the rapporteurs from the sectoral committees wishing to speak. This is first of all our colleague Daniel Freund, who will debrief us on the Commission's discharge.

09:02 - 10:44

Daniel Freund

Thanks, Chair, and thanks, Nils, for the outline on the 27 budget procedure.

From CONT, as usual, we'll be very focused on the anti-corruption bodies, and in particular EPPO. And I think there, I mean I've just recently spoken to Laura Kövesi, I think we need to look into, I mean already there is a proposal here, but I think we need a bit more investment in this, and for two reasons in particular. The first one is that many of the recent countries that joined EPPO basically just provided budget for the delegated prosecutors, but not for any additional support infrastructure for people that actually speak those languages or things like that. So I think we need to look at budget beyond delegated prosecutors.

And then the second reason is, I mean, as I hear, we will have another member state joining EPPO, hopefully, well, latest in 2027 with Hungary. They want to backdate the application of the regulation by five years. So I fear they'll have to deal with a few cases. So we need enough delegated prosecutors and support staff there as well. So I think, you know, that will be the gist of the recommendations from CONT to dedicate enough money to our anti-corruption infrastructure.

I think the issues on the '24 discharge is a separate item on the agenda, right? I don't speak about that now. I do that later. Thanks.

10:44 - 12:10

Andreas Schwab

Thank you very much, Daniel Freund. Now there would be the floor for Ms. Hohlmeier, but she is not yet here.

So, okay, then we come to the discharge. So, okay, procedurally, thank you very much for reminding me, discharge and budget to be separated. Let's turn now to the debriefing on the discharge procedure. The 2024 discharge procedure was concluded in CONT with the votes on 24th of March on the second batch of reports. The debate and votes in plenary took place respectively on the 28th and 29th of April.

In September of this year, CONT committee will consider the second report of the postponed discharge, which concerns the Council as usual. The 2024 discharge procedure was the second after the 2024 elections and the implementation of the EP 2024 reform, which implied many changes to the discharge procedure, including an increased focus on the Commission discharge. Therefore, I will invite now the CONT rapporteurs and then the rapporteurs from all opinion-giving committees to make a short debrief on their discharge file or opinion for three minutes. And now again, thank you very much, the floor is yours, lieber Daniel Freund.

12:10 - 14:46

Daniel Freund

Thanks, Chair. So I won't go into the actual content of the report.

We have all seen them, we have debated them and voted them. But what I would like to say is I still found that the discharge debate, the way that it's organized, is dysfunctional to a certain extent because we discuss all files at the same time.

And then you have one colleague speaking about the Commission discharge, the next one about the Court, then one about agencies, and it's all over the place and it's actually not a discussion. So we have just made this whole plenary experience last Strasbourg session, we want to have more debate. And I would, and I mean we discussed that among the coordinators, but I would invite us again to consider if we do not want to split up the discharge debates, at least maybe separate out the Commission discharge, which is by far the biggest one, have a separate debate on that so that you can actually talk about things and not just do a TikTok video or something in the plenary.

The second question that I would like again to raise is that of the presence of of the leadership of the institutions that we discharge. It's absolutely normal that, for example, the President of the Court of Auditor is is present when we discuss the discharge of his institution, but the Commission President is is not present during during the debates and I I I think that that would make sense. And then the last third point that I want to make is now it's obviously about following up on the recommendations that we have made. If we just do the discharge resolution and then we don't follow up, then then I think we we haven't really done our job. So there are a number of recommendations in in different discharge reports where I think we really ought to follow up.

So, for example, from the Commission discharge, I mean, we ask for the triggering of the conditionality procedure for Slovakia. EPPO has since come out and and made the same demand. So now you have two institutions recommending that.

I haven't seen any kind of reaction from the Commission. So I think that's something that we ought to put pressure on. Second point I can mention for the colleagues in the Transport Committee is for example the recommendation on the Qatar air transport agreement where we said it should be evaluated and if necessary suspended. So we would invite the colleagues from the TRAN Committee now to actually do that. Thank you very much.

14:46 - 14:58

Andreas Schwab

Thank you very much, Mr. Freund, for this comprehensive overview.

And I would like now to give the floor to Mr. Zdechovský who is replacing Monika Hohlmeier to debrief on the file of the agencies.

14:58 - 20:07

Tomáš Zdechovský

Yes, colleagues, so sorry for Monika. She has a delay of the flight. I had it also delay also today. It's quite complicated day for the flights to Brussels. I hope so that she will come and join us.

She gave me the remarks about agencies. I will only say that everything what is here really involved in this paper, it's quite interesting and I fully agree what Monika would like to say.

First, sound financial management is improving, but vigilance remains necessary. The European Court of Auditors issues largely positive assessment and financial risk remain low. Also, it's quite positive. Open audit finding decreased and budget implementation improved. Procurement weaknesses remain the main source of audit finding across agencies.

It's very good.

Strong governance and compliance cannot be for granted. The Cedefop case highlighted the consequences of failures due process and good administration. Delays and insufficient follow-up can create legal, financial and reputation risk and agencies must fully comply with EU staff regulation and internal rules.

Cybersecurity is now a core operation risk of the agencies. The CEPOL cyber track demonstrate the operational, financial, and reputation impact of cyber incidents. Cybersecurity is a governance challenge, not merely an IT issues.

Preparedness and resilient infrastructure are essential, and adequate resources matter. Strong staffing and budgets for agencies such as Europol and Eurojust support EU priorities in security and justice, and agencies can only meet growing expectations if resources match responsibilities. Priorities what Monika mentioned going forward is strengthen procurement and financial control, improve procurement oversight, transparency and accountability, address remaining weaknesses identified by auditors, reinforce cybersecurity across all agencies, establish a robust framework for managing cyber risks.

This is what I mentioned before, continue improving budget implementation, further reduce carryover and ensure timely payment, maintain financial discipline while improving efficiency and performance.

and performance and equip key agencies to deliver on EU priorities, maintain adequate staffing and resources for agencies with growing operational responsibilities and ensure agencies can respond effectively and emerging threats and policy challenges. I think that it's very important to mention that EU agencies are performing well overall, but procurement and government and cybersecurity remain the key area for improvement. The priority is combine strong accountability with adequate resources, ensure efficiency delivered and sound financial management.

And this is what Monika prepared for us.

20:07 - 23:49

Andreas Schwab

Thank you very much, Tomas Zdechovský, for that outline of our colleague. And I would like to tell you that our colleague Tridico is unfortunately also delayed by a flight, and he has asked me to read out to you very quickly what he would like to say here. So first of all, he regrets that he can't be present today.

His point of view is that this year's discharge exercise confirmed the importance of Parliament's scrutiny role in ensuring transparency, accountability and sound financial management across the Union's institutional framework. Overall, the institutions demonstrated a satisfactory level of budgetary implementation and administrative management, our colleague Trzaskowski wants to say, and at the same time the discharge procedure highlighted a number of recurring priorities that deserve continued attention in the year ahead. First, that means Parliament attached particular importance to transparency, ethics and accountability.

Citizens rightly expect the highest standards from European institutions, especially in a context where public trust must constantly be strengthened. Ensuring robust ethical frameworks, preventing conflicts of interest, and improving transparency in decision-making therefore remains key priorities. Second, significant attention was devoted to human resources policies. Across institutions, Parliament stressed the need to address staff well-being, equal opportunities, gender balance, diversity, and inclusion, while ensuring that institutions remain attractive employers capable of recruiting and retaining highly qualified personnel. Third, our colleague Tridico wants to say that the discharge exercise underlined the growing relevance of digitization, cybersecurity, and data protection.

As institutions increasingly rely on digital tools and manage large amounts of sensitive information, investments in resilience, security and technological modernization are essential. A further horizontal priority concerns sound financial management and performance. Parliament continued to encourage institutions to improve efficiency, ensure value for money and strengthen internal control mechanisms. The discharge procedure also confirmed for him the importance of constructive cooperation between Parliament and the institutions concerned. Effective scrutiny is only possible when institutions engage openly with Parliament, provide timely information and participate fully in the accountability process.

In this regard, the situation concerning the Council remains an exception. Parliament continues to regret the absence of meaningful cooperation in the discharge procedure and reiterates its call for a constructive inter-institutional dialogue. Overall, our colleague Tridico wants to conclude the 2024 discharge exercise demonstrated that accountability, transparency and good administration remain fundamental principles for all EU institutions. Thank you very much, colleague Tridico, for this contribution.

And like this, I would like to go further with contributions from CONT and BUDG in this discharge. And I haven't seen anyone asking for the floor, but I'm trying to reach out to my colleagues that are here and that I want to thank for the time they spent on that coordination meeting, and I want to ask them if they would like to have the floor. Raquel, over to you.

23:49 - 26:10

Raquel García Hermida-Van Der Walle

Thank you, Chair. Thank you so much, Andreas. And well, I'm sitting here as standing rapporteur on the budget for the FEMM Committee. And on the discharge, I will be very brief. We had mostly comments on discharge elements of the also the European Parliament discharge.

And those have to do especially with the gender action plan, which we think should be a public document. We believe that any action taken within the institutions, including the European Commission, but very particularly the European Parliament, with regards to gender equality should be known to the public and we should take pride in what we're doing. So we're hoping that the institutions will follow the line and give a bit more clarity. Maybe, I don't know how much time I have, but maybe on the budget guidelines for next year. From the FEMM committee as rapporteur, I will be putting forward a set of very clear priorities whereby the funding for EIGE will be very important.

We see that we keep asking more and more from our Institute for Gender Equality and they are severely under-budgeted and under-resourced and that is a constant. So we will keep doing that and we will also be asking for a slightly a bit more budget not too much within ESF for the application or well the implementation of the initiative My Voice My Choice so that member states do not have to cut on other priorities but do have the means to apply My Voice My Choice without having to cost ESF funds for other things any resources. Lastly I will say one thing very shortly on as a reaction to the comment of colleague Freund on EPPO has not so much to do with FEMM but I think it's important.

I fully agree that we need to look at the resources for EPPO. There is not only the operational reason for doing so but also the independence reason for doing so. We're moving towards the revision of the mandate as we all know and the progress report which was released two years ago already makes clear that depending on member state authorities for resources, particularly for administrative things like translations and such, can pose undue pressure on the organ, on EPPO, so I think it's very good that we try to increase that. Thank you so much.

26:10 - 26:35

Andreas Schwab

Thank you very much, colleague, for this contribution.

May I ask other colleagues to take the floor if they want? That doesn't seem to be the case at this stage. Our coordination will not be ended with that meeting. It was just a meeting to check the state of play. I don't know if our rapporteur would like to have a final word, Mr. Ušakovs?

26:35 - 26:42

Nils Ušakovs

Yeah, I will be very short. Thank you for the priorities. Well, we have substance to work with. Thank you.

26:42 - 26:50

Andreas Schwab

Thank you, colleagues, for this constructive meeting. We have been concise and precise, and like that, we can also leave early. Thank you very much.

26:50 - 26:50

Have a nice day.

29:21 - 30:07

Speaker 9

The interpretation is available in all the languages that were requested. And we have only one item on the agenda today, which is the presentation of the European Court of Auditors' special report on the recovery and resilience facility. And we have with us today the member of the Court of Auditors, Mr. Ivana Maletić, who will present the report. And we also have the representative of the European Commission, Mr. Gert Jan Koopman, who is the Director-General for Budget. So, I will give the floor first to Mrs. Maletić for the presentation of the report.

And then we will have the reaction from the Commission and then the questions from the members. So, Mrs. Maletić, you have the floor.