2013 discharge: EU general budget, European Commission and executive agencies

At the Economic and Financial Affairs Committee on 17 February 2015, the Council recommended the European Parliament to give a discharge to the Commission for implementation of the 2013 EU budget. This recommendation was prepared on the basis of the Court of Auditors' annual report.

Main findings: the Council noted that the error rate for payments in 2013 remained relatively stable compared to the previous year. However, it regretted that the EU budget continues to be affected by an error rate above the materiality threshold of 2%. At the same time, the Council recalled that the error rate is not a measure of fraud, inefficiency or waste of funds.

The Council recognised the efforts made by the Commission and member states to implement the Court of Auditors' recommendations of previous years to improve the management and control of EU funds.

It noted that policies for which management is shared by the Commission and the Member States remain more affected by error than policies directly managed by the Commission. The Council regretted that for an important part of the transactions under shared management affected by error, national authorities had enough information to detect and correct the errors concerned. It called on the Commission to continue exercising its supervisory role and to provide guidance to Member States in order to ensure that spending is in line with the rules.

Funds directly managed by the Commission: the Council regretted the recurrent increase in the error rate for most policies. It urged the Commission to continue improving its control system.

Lastly, some delegations emphasised the importance of Member States taking full responsibility for maintaining - and where necessary improving - effective and efficient control mechanisms to manage EU funds at national level.