2009 discharge: EU general budget, Court of Justice

The European Parliament adopted by 358 votes to 36, with 12 abstentions a decision on discharge to be granted to the Registrar of the European Court of Justice in respect of the implementation of its budget for the financial year 2009.

Furthermore, Parliament adopted a resolution with observations which are an integral part of the decision to grant discharge. The resolution recalls that, in 2009, the Court of Justice had commitment appropriations available amounting to a total of EUR 318 million (2008: EUR 297 million), with a utilisation rate of 98.5%, higher than the average of the other institutions (97.69%).

Parliament notes that the Court of Auditors performed an in-depth assessment of supervisory and control systems in the Court of Justice, the European Ombudsman and the European Data Protection Supervisor which included the examination of an additional sample of transactions involving payments relating to human resources and to other administrative expenditure. As far as the Court of Justice is concerned, this assessment had broadly positive results.

However, the Court of Auditors indicated in its annual report that the Court of Justice failed to anticipate the expiry of a framework contract, and ordered services amounting to EUR 102 000 without applying competitive procurement procedures. Recalling that for the financial year 2008, a similar criticism was made; Members call on the Court of Justice to ensure that procurement procedures are better prepared and coordinated.

As regards the rest, Parliament welcomes the fact that there were no other negative observations made by the Court of Auditors and notes the good overall functioning of control and monitoring systems, as well as that of the internal audit unit of the Court of Justice.

From an internal perspective, Parliament welcomes the increase in the number of cases dealt with by the Court and welcomes:

• the ongoing successful cooperation in the sphere of training with other institutions and with the European Administrative School;
• the modernisation of the Court of Justice's work methods, in particular computerisation of the Registry of the Court of Justice, where the Paper Register dating back to 1952 had finally been replaced by Electronic Register;
• the good interinstitutional cooperation on buildings, security, environmental protection and administrative management.

Lastly, Parliament notes the difficulties the Court of Justice experienced as regards the recruitment of qualified conference interpreters, and the limitations, as well as the need, to use a range of interpretation techniques in order to be able to qualitatively and quantitatively satisfy all requests for interpretation. This matter should be covered in the next annual report of the Court of Justice.