Legislative Observatory
European Parliament
Please fill in this field to find a procedure

2012 discharge: EU general budget, Economic and Social Committee

2013/2201(DEC)

The European Parliament adopted a decision concerning the discharge to be granted to the Secretary-General of the European Economic and Social Committee (EESC) in respect of the implementation of the Agency’s budget for the financial year 2012.

In its resolution accompanying the discharge decision, adopted by 518 votes to 81 with 6 abstentions, Parliament concluded, with the Court of Auditors, 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.

Parliament also noted with satisfaction that in its 2012 annual report, the Court of Auditors observed that no significant weaknesses had been identified in respect of the audited topics related to the human resources and the procurement for the European Economic and Social Committee (EESC).

Budgetary and financial management: Parliament noted that in 2012 the EESC budget amounted to EUR 128.816 million, with a utilisation rate of 96.8%. It stated that the 96.8% budget implementation rate for 2012 is higher than rate for 2011. It noted the rise by 0.2% in the 2012 budget compared to the previous annual budget. It supported the EESC's efforts to limit the budgets of the coming years, thereby ensuring a flat rate increase.

EESC’s framework action: Parliament 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;
  • the modernisation of the IT infrastructure.

Lastly, Parliament called for the rationalisation of human resources in the Joint Services (EESC/CoR) and in translation. It found the on-going contacts between the EESC, the CoR and Parliament in this matter a positive contribution to the rationalisation of resources.