Speech Siim Kallas over budget rapport (en) - Montesquieu Instituut

Brussels, 18 November 2009

President Caldeira, Chairman, honourable ministers, ladies and gentlemen,

I would like to start my few remarks by thanking President Caldeira and the Court of Auditors for such a clear and instructive audit report. The dialogue and open cooperation that we maintained with the court during the past year has brought some contribution to this very accomplished report. This is the last annual report presented during the first Barroso Commission. It is also the best report so far.

Ladies and gentlemen, as you have just heard President Caldeira state, the level of irregularity has decreased overall in recent years. Things really started to improve five years ago, and since 2004 the "red area" has halved. For the first time ever, agriculture, taken as a whole, is "green". The "education and citizenship" policy group has also turned green this year, and for "research", the progress continues. Please also note that the Court gives a clean opinion on the accounts, for the second year running. This is a major achievement.

This said, the report also clearly charts the work that still needs to be done. The "red" area is now just about 30 %, corresponding to the cohesion policy, the one area where the Court has still not found significant progress in the error level. But this was perhaps to be expected, given that in 2008, the Court did not audit payments made under the improved systems set up for the new 2007-13 programming period.

In this regard, the Commission notes that the Court's findings for cohesion largely coincide with the Commission's own general assessment. For structural funds, the Commission had reservations in 2008 because of deficiencies in the control systems in Belgium, Germany, Italy, Spain, Bulgaria, the UK, France, Poland and Luxembourg.

The Court also reminds us of the essential role of complete and reliable information from all Member States on financial corrections. We need this to prove that multi-annual control systems work and to mitigate the effects of the payment errors detected. I urge you all to redouble efforts in this field in order to improve dramatically the situation in the cohesion area.

The Court further recommends that the Commission should continue to strive to gain assurance from the annual summaries of all Member States as well as from voluntary initiatives by certain Member States, in the form of national declarations, or by supreme audit institutions. The Commission agrees, but, obviously, we would need to be able to count on high-quality input from Member States. We see improvements, but perhaps we need to strengthen the legal base to accelerate the process.

The Commission looks forward to discussing further actions during the discharge procedure. It hopes for support from the Council, and expects from Member States individually a firm commitment to further improve the management and the supervision and control of the EU funds allocated to them.

Thank you for your attention.

Siim Kallas Vice-President of the European Commission responsible for Administrative Affairs, Audit and Anti-Fraud Remarks following presentation of the European Court of Auditors' annual report on the 2008 budget ECOFIN Council Brussels, 18 November 2009