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The European Parliament adopted
a resolution based on the own-initiative report drafted by. José Javier POMĖS
RUIZ (EPP-ED, ES) on transparency in financial matters in the extension
of the Commission’s Green Paper on the European Transparency Initiative and
in the Commission's Communication on the follow-up to the Green Paper (see INI/2007/2115). Parliament recalls that
transparency is closely related to whether the information provided on
beneficiaries of funds is easily accessible, reliable and suitable for
further research, comparison and assessment. Members discuss both EU funds
under central management and EU funds under shared, decentralised or joint
management. They believe that, as a general principle, the Commission web
pages disclosing information on the beneficiaries of EU funding of whatever
category, whether contracts, grants, agriculture or structural fund
expenditure (or other types of funding) should be organised in such a way as
to make it possible not only to obtain information on individual
beneficiaries but also to carry out searches based on specific criteria in
order to obtain an overall picture under various headings, which can then be
checked against the Commission's implementation figures. The Commission is called on to: - accept political
responsibility for publishing information on beneficiaries of EU funding
under all modes of management;
- introduce a fully operational
system of information for the wider public on all beneficiaries of EU
subsidies and the outstanding recoveries by the end of 2009.
Parliament goes on to point out
that the EU institutions at present have divergent approaches to declarations
of their Members' financial interests ranging from a public register
(European Parliament) to no declarations at all. MEPs are of the opinion that
all institutions should consider whether the current principles and rules are
sufficient and note the possible need to revise the rules of the European
Parliament to make the public disclosure of financial interests on the
internet obligatory. MEPs consider that it would be
inappropriate to create a single advisory body for all EU office-holders bearing
in mind the specific situation of Members of the European Parliament, who are
directly elected by the citizens. They believe, nevertheless, that each
institution should adopt rules of professional ethics for its Members
(depending on the specific nature of each institution) and recommend that the
rules of professional ethics of each institution should also touch upon the
overall political, financial and legal responsibility of its Members. Regretting that information
regarding recoveries of Community funds is excluded from the European
Transparency Initiative, Parliament calls on the Commission to make available
to the budgetary authority and to the public, the names and amounts of
recoveries due under or credited to the EU budget, as well as the final destination
of these sums. Members welcome, however, the fact that a summary of waivers
of recoveries of established amounts receivable in 2006 was published as an
annex to the Commission's Communication setting out a synthesis of the
Commission's management achievements in 2006. In this respect, it notes the
total of waivers of recoveries (amounts above EUR 100 000) was EUR 23 038 784
for the EC budget and EUR 6 549 996 for the EDF budget. The Commission is
called upon, in the future, to make further improvements along these lines
with a view to increasing transparency. With regard to the composition
of expert groups advising the Commission, Parliament notes that the register
of expert groups does not cover certain kinds of groups such as comitology
committees assisting the Commission in policy areas where the Commission is
empowered to implement legislation (of which there were a total of 250 in
2004). It disagrees with the general exclusion of these groups from the
register and expects the Commission to make sure that the register contains
all expert groups, including information on members of comitology committees,
individual experts, joint entities and social dialogue committees, to ensure
the application of the same transparent approach to the membership of
these expert committees, unless legitimate compelling grounds are given
individually on a case by case basis. It calls upon the Commission to conduct
a thorough review of the composition of its expert groups before the end of
2008 and to ensure a balanced representation of interest groups in the
membership of expert groups. Lastly, Parliament calls upon
the Commission to consider how a public "blacklist" of confirmed
fraud cases and the entities behind them could be set up to name and shame as
well as inform the public about the results of the Community's anti-fraud
endeavours. It reiterates the urgent need for a code of ethics for OLAF, with
a view to guaranteeing the presumption of innocence in the case of
beneficiaries who have been the object of a long and prejudicial
investigation procedure and are cleared by the courts.
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