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2006 discharge: European Food Safety Authority EFSA

2007/2059(DEC)

PURPOSE: presentation of the final accounts of the European Food Safety Authority for the financial year 2006.

CONTENT: this document sets out a detailed account of the implementation of the 2006 budget, including the revenue and expenditure and the balance sheet for the year concerned.

According to this document, the final budget amounted to EUR 40.2 million (in comparison to EUR 36.9 million in 2005) including a 100% Community contribution.

As regards the staffing policy, the Authority, whose head office is based in Parma (Italy), officially set out 250 posts in its establishment plan. 173 are currently occupied with + 57 other staff (auxiliary contracts, seconded national experts, local staff, and employment agency staff) totalling 230 posts assigned to administrative and operational duties. Staff expenditure in 2006 amounted to EUR 17.238 million (final budget appropriations paid).

During 2006, the Authority’s activities can be summarised as follows:

  • following the 323 requests for scientific opinions made to the EFSA in 2006, 132 opinions and 4 reports were adopted and published. They covered many areas dealt with by the 9 scientific panels, including aromatic plants, genetically modified organisms (with the WHO), bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) or transmissible spongiform encephalopathy (TSE);
  • EFSA’s communication of risks to the public and its activities in general have been broadly acknowledged as a result of 4 600 articles covering the Authority’s scientific work. Consultation of EFSA’s website also increased, with 1.33 million hits, and there were 12 200 subscribers to EFSA Highlights. The coordination of the communication of risks was stepped up through the Advisory Forum and the workshops organised;
  • EFSA’s networking with interested parties, national authorities and institutional counterparts intensified through the activities of, inter alia, a forum for interested parties and programmes aimed at the new Member States or candidate countries;
  • the Advisory Forum met five times with a view to networking with national authorities on specific topics, such as coordination in the event of a crisis scenario and increasing the use of the extranet linking national authorities, the Commission and EFSA;
  • with regard to the assessment of EFSA in 2005, the Management Board submitted its recommendations in the summer of 2006 and their implementation has been ongoing since then.

The complete version of the final accounts may be found at the following address: http://www.efsa.europa.eu/en/about_efsa/efsa_funding/accounts.html