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EU Council spending disapproved by the European Parliament
Dalia Grybauskaite, Commissioner for Financial Programming and Budget
Members of the European Parliament postponed, on March 17, the approving of the Council’s administrative spending for the year 2007. Members of the Budgetary Control Committee claimed that the spending had become increasingly operational and therefore the Parliament should have scrutiny over the Council budget. Moreover, the Council has refused to give the committee more detailed facts. “The vote to postpone ‘granting discharge’ was to show that MEPs took this issue very seriously but also to give Council the opportunity to deliver the information requested before the April plenary session, when the full House will vote on budget discharges for the EU institutions and agencies,” said Søren Søndergaard, rapporteur for this issue.
The Budgetary Control Committee decided to postpone granting discharge to other bodies also, for instance the Police College, mainly because of the lack of appropriate information as was the case for the Council. However, the Commission and other institutions and agencies got the approval of the EP.
The main recommendation of the Budgetary Control Committee to the Council is to scrutinise its administrative expenditures in the same way as that of the other European institutions as part of the discharge procedure. MEPs highlighted that the Council ‘unlike other institutions’, does not submit an annual activity report to Parliament, although Parliament attempts to elicit information from the Council on its budget execution and a number of specific questions about the Council budget.
Unlike the Council, the European Parliament’s political authorities got the stamp of approval, however, MEPs made a number of comments and recommendations. For instance the voluntary pension fund for Members had an actuarial deficit of 30,92 million Euro at the end of 2007 and the committee voted to say that Parliament should “under no circumstances provide extra money out of the budget to cover the fund’s deficit,” as is defined in the resolution drafted by Paolo Casaca, MEP for the European Socialist Group.
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