REPORT on good governance with regards to the EU regional policy: procedures of assistance and control by the European Commission
7.10.2010 - (2009/2231(INI))
Committee on Regional Development
Rapporteur: Ramona Nicole Mănescu
MOTION FOR A EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT RESOLUTION
on good governance with regards to the EU regional policy: procedures of assistance and control by the European Commission
The European Parliament,
– having regard to the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, and in particular Articles 174 to178 thereof,
– having regard to the Commission proposal for the revision of the Financial Regulation applicable to the general budget of the European Union of 28 May 2010 (COM(2010)0260),
– having regard to Council Regulation (EC) No 1083/2006 of 11 July 2006 laying down general provisions on the European Regional Development Fund, the European Social Fund and the Cohesion Fund[1],
– having regard to its resolution of 21 October 2008 on governance and partnership at national and regional levels and a basis for projects in the sphere of regional policy[2],
– having regard to its resolution of 15 June 2010 on transparency in regional policy and its funding[3],
– having regard to the Committee of the Regions’ White Paper on Multi-level governance of 17-18 June 2009 and the Consultation Report,
– having regard to the conclusions of the informal Ministerial meeting which took place on 16-17 March 2010 in Málaga,
– having regard to the Commission Communication of 6 September 2004 , entitled ‘The respective responsibilities of the Member States and the Commission in the shared management of the Structural Funds and the Cohesion Fund - Current situation and outlook for the new programming period after 2006’ (COM(2004)0580),
– having regard to the Commission Communication of 14 May 2008 on the results of the negotiations concerning cohesion policy strategies and programmes for the programming period 2007-2013 (COM(2008)0301),
– having regard to the Annual Report of the Court of Auditors on the implementation of the budget concerning the financial years 2006 and 2008,
– having regard to the Commission Communication of 19 February 2008, entitled ‘An action plan to strengthen the Commission’s supervisory role under shared management of structural actions’ (COM(2008)0097),
– having regard to the Commission Communication of 3 February 2009, entitled ‘Report on the implementation of the action plan to strengthen the Commission’s supervisory role under shared management of structural actions’ (COM(2009)0042),
– having regard to the Communication of 28 October 2009 from Commissioners Samecki and Špidla to the Commission giving an interim report on the follow-up to the action plan to strengthen the Commission’s supervisory role under shared management of structural actions (SEC(2009)1463),
– having regard to the Commission Communication of 18 February 2010 on the impact of the action plan to strengthen the Commission’s supervisory role under shared management of structural actions (COM(2010)0052),
– having regard to Rule 48 of its Rules of Procedure,
– having regard to the report of the Committee on Regional Development (A7‑0280/2010),
A. whereas implementation of the cohesion policy is predominantly decentralised and based on sub-national authorities assuming responsibility,
B. whereas cohesion policy plays a forerunner role in the application of multi-level governance, as an instrument to improve the quality of decision-making processes through the active involvement of sub-national authorities from the pre-legislative phase of the debates,
C. whereas ‘multi-level governance’ means coordinated action by the Union, Member States and local and regional authorities, as well as socio-economic partners and NGOs, based on the principles of partnership and co-financing and aimed at drawing up and implementing European Union policies, a definition which implies responsibility being shared between the different tiers of government,
D. whereas the 2006 report of the European Court of Auditors showed that the control systems in place for the cohesion policy were not effective enough, with a 12% error rate in the expenditure reimbursed, and the 2008 report confirmed these data with 11% of funds unduly reimbursed,
E. whereas the Commission needs to strengthen its supervisory role to reduce the level of error, improve the control system and increase assistance to sub-national authorities and beneficiaries, all of which will lead in the long term to a more result-oriented, user-friendly policy,
F. whereas funding application procedures that are too complicated, and an excessive number of checks, are likely to discourage potential beneficiaries of cohesion policy,
G. whereas the practical solutions which our fellow citizens expect to see as regards public services (such as public transport, drinking water, public health, social housing and public education) can be achieved only by means of good governance, involving two complementary systems: firstly, the institutional system, which provides for the allocation of powers and budgets between the State and regional and local authorities and, secondly, the partnership system, which brings together public and private parties with an interest in a given topic in a given territory,
H. whereas partnership should take account of all relevant communities and groups, can bring benefit and added value to the implementation of cohesion policy through enhanced legitimacy, guaranteed transparency and better absorption of funds, and should also be assessed in terms of the social and civic value it represents,
I. whereas an integrated approach should pay attention to the regions’ special characteristics (geographical and natural disadvantages, depopulation, outermost region, etc.) if it is to meet local and regional challenges,
Applying multi-level governance
1. Welcomes the CoR White Paper on multi-level governance and the recognition of sub-national subsidiarity in the Lisbon Treaty; stresses that the multi-level approach should be applied not only vertically but also horizontally, among actors of the same level, in all shared-competence Union policies including the cohesion policy;
2. Welcomes the conclusions of the Málaga informal ministerial meeting of March 2010 and considers that multi-level governance is a precondition for achieving territorial cohesion in Europe; calls for this principle to be made compulsory for Member States in policy areas with a strong territorial impact in order to ensure balanced territorial development in line with the subsidiarity principle; points out that such a provision should in no way lead to more burdensome procedures;
3. Considers that satisfactory multi-level governance should be based on a bottom-up approach, taking account of the diversity of administrative arrangements existing in the different Member State; calls on the Member States to identify the most efficient means of implementing governance at the various levels and to improve their cooperation with the regional and local authorities as well as with the Community’s administration by, for example, inviting officials from all tiers of government to the periodic meetings organised with the Commission or by establishing European Territorial Pacts that link on a voluntary basis the different tiers of government concerned;
4. Recommends that the territorial impact analysis should become standard practice through the involvement, upstream of the policy decision, of the various parties concerned in order to understand the economic, social and environmental repercussions on the regions of Community legislative and non-legislative proposals;
5. Stresses that multi-level governance allows better exploitation of the potential of territorial cooperation thanks to the relations developed among private and public actors across borders; urges those Member States which have not yet done so to adopt as soon as possible the necessary provisions allowing the setting up of European Groupings of Territorial Cooperation; recommends that the Commission promote exchange of information between the EGTCs already created and those in the process of being set up in the framework of existing programmes; congratulates the Committee of the Regions on the quality of its work on EGTCs and calls for its available instruments, in particular its Lisbon Monitoring Platform and its Subsidiarity Monitoring Network, to be used to promote the exchange of best practices between regions and Member States with a view to the joint identification and determination of objectives, subsequent planning actions, and, finally, a comparative evaluation of the outcomes of cohesion policy;
6. Calls on national, regional and local authorities to intensify their use of the integrated approach during the current programming period; proposes that this approach be made compulsory in the context of the future cohesion policy; considers that a flexible and integrated approach should not only take into account the economic, social and environmental aspects of territorial development but also enable coordination of the interests of the various partners, in the light of territorial characteristics, in order to respond to challenges at local and regional level;
7. Urges the Commission to develop a guide for public and private actors on how to implement in practice the principles of multi-level governance and the integrated approach; recommends that actions aimed at promoting these two approaches be financed under ERDF technical assistance;
8. Recommends that the Committee of the Regions use the 2011 Open Days, and as far as still possible at this stage, the 2010 Open Days as an occasion to promote and deepen the debate on identifying the most suitable means of promoting multi-governance; suggests that a European multi-level governance label be launched and put in place in all regions across the EU as from 2011;
9. Notes that decentralised delivery mechanisms are a key factor for multi-level governance; given the necessity for simplification, urges Member States and regions to sub-delegate the implementation of a part of an operational programme, where appropriate and in particular to better exploit the use of global grants; calls on them to take the decentralisation measures required, at both legislative and budgetary levels, so that the system of multi-level governance can work effectively and in keeping with the principles of partnership and subsidiarity; stresses that regional and local authorities, especially those having legislative powers, should be more closely involved, as they are the best informed on their regions’ potentialities and needs and could therefore contribute to an improved implementation of cohesion policy;
10. Urges the Member States to involve relevant regional and local authorities and civil society actors from the very early stages of negotiations on Union legislation and on programmes benefiting from the Structural Funds so as to allow a timely dialogue between the different layers of government; calls for these authorities to participate in the responsible decision-making bodies on an equal footing with the national representatives;
11. Emphasises that for the efficient absorption of funds and maximisation of their impact there must be sufficient administrative capacity both at EU and at regional and local level; calls therefore on the Commission to improve its administrative capacity in order to increase the added value of the cohesion policy and ensure the sustainability of the actions and on the Member States to ensure adequate administrative structures and human capital in terms of recruitment, remuneration, training, resources, procedures, transparency and accessibility;
12. Calls on the Member States also to strengthen, where appropriate, the role of regional and local authorities in programme preparation, management and implementation as well as boosting the resources at their disposal; recommends the adoption in the cohesion policy of the local development methodology based on local partnerships, in particular for projects related to urban, rural and cross-border issues; calls on the Commission to encourage partnership between regions having a similar specific development potential and to ensure that there is an appropriate framework at EU level put in place for the coordination of macroregional cooperation;
13. Considers that the principles of partnership and co-financing foster the assumption of responsibility by sub-national authorities in the implementation of cohesion policy; reiterates its commitment to these principles of good management and calls for their continued application despite the restrictions on public spending arising from the economic crisis;
14. Recommends enhancing partnership practice and urges the Commission to come up with an agreed definition of the concept of partnership as a condition for building up real partnerships with regional and local authorities and civil society actors; asks the Commission to seriously verify the implementation of this principle by developing specific evaluation tools and to spread best practices in this area through ICT tools; emphasises that partnership can contribute to effectiveness, efficiency, legitimacy and transparency in all the phases of Structural Fund programming and implementation and can increase commitment to and ownership of programme outputs; underlines the important role of the voluntary sector in the partnership process;
15. Draws attention to the requirement to consult the general public through organisations representing civil society and NGOs in order to reflect their proposals, and stresses that the participation of civil society helps to legitimise the decision-making process; notes that the efforts to involve the public in the preparations for the operational programmes for the period 2007-2013 were not as successful as hoped for; calls on the Commission to identify good practices and to facilitate their application with a view to improving public involvement ahead of the next programming period;
16. Calls for the multi-level governance principle to be integrated into all phases of design and implementation of the EU2020 Strategy to ensure real ownership of the results by the regional and local authorities, which have to implement it; highlights in this connection the proposal for a ‘Territorial Pact of Local and Regional Authorities for Europe 2020’ to encourage regions and cities to contribute to the successful achievement of the objectives of the 2020 Strategy;
17. Recommends that the Commission re-analyse the possibilities of implementing the pilot project initiated by the European Parliament entitled ‘Erasmus for elected local and regional representatives’ and, with a view to raising the standard of proposed projects and meet the objective of efficiency, calls on the Commission to implement, under the ERDF operational technical assistance budget line, a training and mobility scheme for local and regional actors involved in running cohesion policy programmes together with the partners specialised in implementing the concepts of integrated approach and multilevel governance; asks the Commission, therefore, to allocate funding for these initiatives effectively and to reinforce networking with regional and local authorities, including through the Committee of the Regions;
18. Takes the view that the European networks of regions should broaden their work in the area of good practices in governance and partnership, should put more emphasis on political and strategic lessons learnt from previous programme cycles and should ensure public access to key information on best practices in all European Union languages and thus help to ensure that good practices are in fact implemented;
Strengthening the Commission’s role in supporting regional and local authorities
19. Is of the opinion that a stronger role for the regional and local level must correspond to a strengthened supervisory role for the Commission focusing on checking audit systems rather than single projects; calls in this connection for an EU certification system for national audit bodies; urges the Commission to complete the approval of the compliance assessment reports so as to avoid delays in payments and loss of funds due to decommittment, and to come up with a proposal on the tolerable risk of error before 2012;
20. Welcomes the findings of the Commission report on the February 2010 Action Plan and the corrective and preventive actions begun so far; calls on DG REGIO to continue with this exercise during the whole period of implementation to keep up the momentum generated by the Action Plan;
21. Stresses that European initiatives in the field of cohesion and structural policy need to be better coordinated so as not to jeopardise the coherence of regional policy; calls therefore for strengthened coordination in the Commission between DG REGIO, which is responsible for cohesion and structural policy, and the DGs responsible for the relevant sector-specific initiatives; calls, in view of the Lisbon Treaty’s strengthening of the rights of regional and local authorities, for these authorities to be more closely involved in the development of policy at Commission level, in order to enhance project responsibility among project promoters; also calls, however, for more control of results by the Commission on the spot, so as to improve evaluation both of the efficiency of project structures and of the effectiveness of measures in terms of the objective they seek to achieve;
22. Invites the Commission to reinforce the ‘Train the trainers’ initiative for managing and certifying authorities; stresses that there should be constant monitoring to ensure that training contents are actually transferred to the lower levels in a balanced way, not neglecting the local actors;
23. Urges the Commission to quickly launch the new portal in the SFC 2007 database allowing direct access to relevant information for all actors dealing with Structural Funds; recommends that Member States promote and circulate information on this instrument among regional and local authorities as well as final beneficiaries;
24. Invites the Commission to put in place additional technical assistance mechanisms to promote knowledge at regional and local level on implementation-related problems, especially in Member States where, according to the Commission’s ex-post evaluation of Cohesion Policy programmes 2000-2006, there are very persistent problems regarding their administrative capacity when it comes to the implementation of these programmes;
25. Asks for a standardised application of the single information, single audit (SISA)- model at all audit levels to avoid duplication of audits and over-control; urges the Commission to issue a single audit manual including all the guidance notes produced so far;
26. Invites Member States to further exploit the financial engineering instruments as a means to increase the quality of the projects and the participation of private actors, especially SMEs, in European projects; calls on the Commission to simplify the functioning rules of these instruments, whose current complexity limits their use;
27. Is convinced that compliance with the procedures cannot be at the expense of the quality of interventions; asks the Commission for a more result-oriented policy in the future, focused on quality performance and strategic project development rather than on controls; to this end, urges the Commission to develop objective and measurable indicators which are comparable across the Union for better monitoring and evaluating systems and to give further consideration to the need for flexible rules in the event of economic crises;
28. Emphasises that transparent and clear procedures are factors in good governance; therefore welcomes the ongoing simplification of the Financial Regulation and of the Structural Funds rules and calls on the Member States to fully comply with the requirements of the revised Financial Regulation and to disclose information on final beneficiaries of Structural Funds; urges the Commission to propose understandable rules, which will not require frequent modifications; calls for a simpler architecture for the Funds after 2013, not as a consequence of the economic crisis but as a general principle of the future cohesion policy, in order to facilitate absorption of the funds, and recommends greater transparency and flexibility in the use of the EU Funds in order to avoid an additional administrative burden which may discourage potential partners from taking part in projects;
29. Welcomes the Commission’s Strategic Report on the implementation of the Cohesion Policy Programmes 2010 as it can feed important information back to the policy-making process; considers that its findings also have to be seriously taken into account when formulating proposals for improving the effective implementation of Cohesion Policy programmes;
30. Reiterates its commitment to a strong and properly funded cohesion policy that ensures that all European Union regions develop harmoniously; calls for the budget for the policy to be maintained after 2013 and for any attempt to renationalise it to be rejected;
31. Calls on the Commission to take on board the principles of differentiation and proportionality in future regulations and to adapt requirements according to the size of programmes and nature of partners, especially when small public authorities are involved; asks for wider use of lump-sums and flat rates for all Funds, in particular for overheads and technical assistance; proposes that provision be made for more flexible evaluation criteria with a view to encouraging innovative projects and softer control requirements for pilot projects; encourages the Commission to develop the principle of a ‘bond of trust’ with Member States which undertake to, and succeed in, making good use of the Funds;
32. With a view to building up a more user-friendly policy in the future, calls for deeper harmonisation and integration of the Structural Funds rules, avoiding the breakdown of a project into different parts to apply to different funds; recommends that the focus be put not just on the regularity of expenditure but on quality of interventions and that resources be concentrated in potentiating assistance on the management side;
33. Calls on the Commission to present as soon as possible proposals for the next programming period regulations, to adopt the implementing regulation, elaborate the necessary guidance and provide training on them in due time, and to facilitate the process of negotiations and approval of the operational programmes in order to avoid any delay in the cohesion policy implementation and absorption of funds after 2013;
34. Instructs its President to forward this resolution to the Council, the Commission, and the Member States.
- [1] OJ L 210, 31.7.2006, p.25.
- [2] Texts adopted, P6_ TA(2008)0492.
- [3] Texts adopted, P7_TA(2010)0201.
EXPLANATORY STATEMENT
Over the last decades decentralization of powers in several Member States has considerably reinforced regional and local authorities’ competences in the delivery of Community policies.
The incorporation by the Reform Treaty of sub-national subsidiarity into the Community law for the policies of shared competence allows today territorial authorities to be more deeply involved in the decision-making process both for the design and the implementation of policies, as fully dignified partners to participate in achieving the Community objectives.
This important step towards better multi-level governance answers repeated requests by the Parliament to reinforce the involvement of the sub-national authorities in the conception of policies always respecting the different national constitutional assets.
An efficient implementation depends strongly on how policies are conceived; involving local and regional authorities also in this phase - as those knowing best the needs of their territory and of its population - is an assurance of more effective results at a later stage.
It is crucial thus to place the emphasis on the pre-legislative phase of the decision-making process and on the added value offered by policies and best practices implemented at local and regional level to the development of territorial strategies in the EU.
The cohesion policy is a forerunner in the application of this approach: its regional dimension and the application of the partnership principle represent its added value and contribute to ensure its effectiveness and sustainability.
Committee of the Regions’ White Paper on Multi-level Governance
The White Paper of the Committee of the Regions has opened a timely debate on the common understanding of this principle as a practical instrument for decision-making in the Community policies of shared competence.
The following aspects are considered to see how multi-level governance approach can be better developed in the field of cohesion policy:
· Both dimensions of multi-level governance, vertical - as cooperation among authorities of different levels of government including economic and social stakeholders - and horizontal, among actors of the same level, are need to ensure multi-level cooperation among actors and an integrated approach among policies.
· A clearer definition of the partnership principle would facilitate the setting up of real partnerships with regional and local authorities; in particular the role of and consultation with the local level needs to be strengthened since the early stage of the negotiations on the EU debates. The partnership principle often does not work due to the poor involvement of the local authorities.
· The debate on multi-level governance is strictly linked to that on territorial cohesion: involving sub-national actors in the achievement of the EU objectives is a precondition to effectively implement territorial cohesion. A White Paper on territorial cohesion as a follow up to the Green Paper would represent a timely instrument to clarify how to implement territorial cohesion through multi-level governance in the future regional policy and feed in the debate on the next legislative package.
· The potential of territorial cooperation needs to be better exploited to promote multi-level cooperation across national frontiers. Cross-border regions hold untapped territorial potential and are a place of convergence of policies. In addition the crucial role of territorial co-operation in delivering the EU2020 objectives has been highlighted in many responses to the recent public consultation. The instrument of EGTC should be promoted as a tool to set up of systems of cross-border governance and ensuring the ownership of the different policies at regional and local level.
· Simplification of rules at Community and at national level is precondition for better governance in the cohesion policy. The recent modifications of the General and ERDF Regulations have done important steps ahead in this direction but simplification should not be merely linked to a temporary and extraordinary event as the economic crisis. On the contrary it should inspire the entire legislation of the Structural Funds in future. Also Member States should simplify their national provisions, which very often add up administrative burden not required by the Community rules. As a necessary counterbalance a stronger culture of evaluation needs to be developed at all levels in order to ensure effective controls and avoid errors.
Strengthening Commission’s role in supporting regional and local authorities
The second part of the report analyses the mechanisms of shared management, in particular the different responsibilities of the European Commission and the Member States and gives recommendations on how to improve the system in the implementation of Programmes.
The 2006 report of the European Court of Auditors showed that the control systems in place for the cohesion policy were not effective enough, with a too high error rate (12%) in the expenditure reimbursed. The annual report on 2008 confirmed this data with 11% of funds unduly reimbursed.
Indeed these data are not fully reflecting the actual situation since they include also the 2000-2006 period, when the current control requirements were not in place.
However, lacking data to properly assess the effectiveness of the new provisions for 2007-2013, the current assumption is that the level of error in Structural Funds is still too high and that further energy must be invested in improving the efficiency of the control systems.
The 2008 Action Plan of the Commission on how to strengthen its supervisory role incorporated a series of actions undertaken by the Commission to improve the performance of the funds including both corrective actions and preventive measures for the future.
These actions are analysed and some first recommendations for the current programming period are put forward on how to reinforce guidance by the Commission on control and management procedures and on how to strengthen the Commission’s coordination role in the control phase.
Indeed, one year of Programme implementation is insufficient to fully assess the overall impact of the performed actions. However, encouraging elements can be already retrieved in the two Communications on the impact of the Action plan adopted by the Commission respectively on 3 February 2009 and 18 February 2010.
A supervision of the Commission, as currently foreseen, is considered as not sufficient and cannot make up ineffective control systems at national level persisting during the whole multi-annual period. The audit role of the Commission should be stronger at the beginning of the Programmes with a bigger role of the national level during the implementation phase.
The current system of compliance assessment in particular needs fine-tuning to ensure its full effectiveness during the whole programming period. This exercise has not been concluded yet, which could lead to delays in payments and subsequent loss of funds due to automatic de-commitment.
The control during implementation needs to be improved by potentiating ad hoc checks and increasing assistance to the first-level control carried out by the Managing Authorities (MAs) so to correct irregularities in a timely manner and reduce the overall rate of error. Training and guidance by the Commission should concentrate more on this level, where the highest percentage of error occurs and in particular on those sectors - ineligible expenditure and public procurement - where the highest percentage of irregularities is detected.
Too complex rules governing the Structural funds are partly responsible for these errors. The shared management system characterising the cohesion policy implies a high degree of complexity in the interpretation and application of the rules given the numerous actors involved. This represents indeed the real added value of the Structural funds but engenders also a higher risk of error.
Therefore rules should be simplified to ensure more user-friendly procedures and not discourage potential beneficiaries from participating in projects.
At the same time the Commission needs to potentiate its role of knowledge driver towards the lower levels of governance both with regulatory and non regulatory initiatives - some of which already in place, that have to be enhanced.
Higher investments both in financial assistance and training should be ensured towards national and regional administrations to increase the capacities and knowledge of rules by authorities in charge of Programme management. Especially in the new Member States, where this practice is still new, investment on institutional capacity should be prioritized.
This would allow in the medium term to involve more sub-national authorities in the management and control of Programmes with the Commission assuming rather a strengthened coordination role.
Beside the measures performed through the Action plan, further initiatives should be potentiated:
· reinforcing Commission’s assistance to MAs - given that the majority of errors occurs at the first level control - through targeted workshops, guidance notes, circulation of best practices and training of officials responsible for management; a constant monitoring on the actual transfer of the training measures targeted to the MAs should be put in place in order to check that knowledge is actually passed over with a special attention towards the local level;
· ensuring better coordination among the control levels in place to avoid duplication of audits and over-control. In the long term this improved coordination would free resources within the Commission to be rather devoted to potentiate assistance on the management side;
· the new portal in the current SFC 2007 database should be urgently made operational since it would allow direct access to relevant information to all actors dealing with Structural Funds;
· the potential of the financial engineering instruments should be further developed so to allow respectively the development of qualitative strategic projects and the participation of private actors, especially SMEs, and capitals into European projects. Their current under-utilisation due to their excessive complexity makes the debate on their governance very urgent.
· a better coherence in the rules of the different Funds at Community level would allow for a more integrated approach.
***
Some corrective measures should be implemented immediately so to produce results already in the current programming period. Some others need be tackled in the longer run as outcome of a highly political debate on the cohesion policy after 2013.
In particular the work on simplification, started in 2007 within the Task Force of the Commission should focus on the one hand on suggestions to improve practices in the current implementation period; on the other hand further proposals for simplifying the functioning of the cohesion policy should be put forward: simplification shall become a horizontal and long-lasting principle inspiring the whole philosophy of the future cohesion policy.
A serious reflection is necessary on how to improve governance and consequently effectiveness of the delivery system of the Structural Funds for the period after 2013. The discussions within the High Level Group on the future of cohesion policy should seriously take this aspect into account and Parliament should be actively involved in this debate.
RESULT OF FINAL VOTE IN COMMITTEE
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Date adopted |
28.9.2010 |
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Result of final vote |
+: –: 0: |
35 0 0 |
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Members present for the final vote |
François Alfonsi, Luís Paulo Alves, Sophie Auconie, Catherine Bearder, Jean-Paul Besset, Victor Boştinaru, Zuzana Brzobohatá, John Bufton, Salvatore Caronna, Ricardo Cortés Lastra, Francesco De Angelis, Tamás Deutsch, Rosa Estaràs Ferragut, Elie Hoarau, Danuta Maria Hübner, Filiz Hakaeva Hyusmenova, Seán Kelly, Evgeni Kirilov, Constanze Angela Krehl, Ramona Nicole Mănescu, Riikka Manner, Iosif Matula, Lambert van Nistelrooij, Wojciech Michał Olejniczak, Markus Pieper, Tomasz Piotr Poręba, Monika Smolková, Georgios Stavrakakis, Michael Theurer, Oldřich Vlasák, Kerstin Westphal, Joachim Zeller |
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Substitute(s) present for the final vote |
Jan Březina, Leonidas Donskis, Aldo Patriciello, Maurice Ponga, Heide Rühle, Elisabeth Schroedter |
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