The Committee on Budgetary Control adopted the report by Bogusław SONIK (EPP, PL) in which it called on the European Parliament to grant discharge to the Secretary-General of the European Economic and Social Committee (EESC) in respect of the implementation of the European Economic and Social Committee's budget for the financial year 2012.
Members welcomed the fact that, on the basis of its audit work, the Court of Auditors concluded that the payments as a whole for the year ended on 31 December 2012 for administrative and other expenditure of the institutions and bodies were free from material error. They observed that no significant weaknesses had been identified in respect of the audited topics related to human resources and procurement for the EESC.
Budgetary and financial management: Members noted that in 2012 the EESC budget amounted to EUR 128.816 million, with a utilisation rate of 96.8%. They stated that the 96.8% budget implementation rate for 2012 is higher than rate for 2011. They noted the rise by 0.2% in the 2012 budget compared to the previous annual budget. They supported the EESC's efforts to limit the budgets of the coming years, thereby ensuring a flat rate increase.
EESC’s framework action: Members also made a series of observations on the daily management of the EESC and called for:
- improvements in interinstitutional cooperation to rationalise human resources in the EESC Joint Services and/Committee of the Regions (CoR ), especially in translation;
- continuous monitoring of the staff structure to ensure that the organisation of posts is fully efficient and helps to improve the allocation of the budget;
- the preparation of negotiations on the new administrative cooperation agreement with the CoR, to achieve budget savings between the two institutions;
- increased use of videoconferencing;
- further reductions in interpretation costs;
- strengthening cooperation with other institutions to develop a unified methodology of presenting the translation costs;
- the modernisation of the IT infrastructure.