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2015 discharge: EU general budget, European Data Protection Supervisor

2016/2159(DEC)

PURPOSE: presentation by the Commission of the consolidated annual accounts of the European Union for the financial year 2015, as part of the 2015 discharge procedure.

Analysis of the accounts of the EU Institutions: European Data Protection Supervisor.

Legal reminder: the consolidated annual accounts of the European Union for the year 2015 have been prepared on the basis of the information presented by the institutions and bodies under Article 148(2) of the Financial Regulation applicable to the general budget of the European Union.

(1) Governance and budgetary principles: the organisational governance of the EU consists of institutions, agencies and other EU bodies. The main institutions in the sense of being responsible for drafting policies and taking decisions are the EP, the European Council, the Council and the Commission.

The EU Budget finances a wide range of policies and programmes throughout the EU. In accordance with the priorities set by the European Parliament and the Council in the Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF), the Commission carries out specific programmes, activities and projects in the field.

The budget is prepared by the Commission and usually agreed in mid-December by the Parliament and the Council, based on the procedure of Art. 314 TFEU.

According to the principle of budget equilibrium, the total revenue must equal total expenditure (payment appropriations) for a given financial year.

EU revenues: the EU has two main categories of funding: own resources revenues and sundry revenues. Own resources can be divided into traditional own resources (such as custom levies), the own resource based on value added tax (VAT) and the resource based on gross national income (GNI). Sundry revenues arising from the activities of the EU (e.g. competition fines) normally represent less than 10 % of total revenue. Own resources revenue make up the vast majority of EU funding.

Expenditure of the EU institutions: the EU's operational expenditure of these institutions takes different forms, depending on how the money is paid out and managed.

From 2014 onwards, the Commission classifies its expenditure as follows:

  • Direct management: the budget is implemented directly by the Commission services.
  • Indirect management: the Commission confers tasks of implementation of the budget to bodies of EU law or national law, such as the EU agencies.
  • Shared management: under this method of budget implementation tasks are delegated to Member States. About 80 % of the expenditure falls under this management mode covering such areas as agricultural spending and structural actions.

Consolidated annual accounts of the EU: this Commission document concerns the EU's consolidated accounts for the year 2015 and details how spending by the EU institutions and bodies was carried out. The consolidated annual accounts of the EU provide financial information on the activities of the institutions, agencies and other bodies of the EU from an accrual accounting and budgetary perspective.

It also presents the accounting principles applicable to the European budget (in particular, consolidation).

The document also presents the different financial actors involved in the budget process (accounting officers, internal officers and authorising officers) and recalls their respective roles in the context of the tasks of sound financial management.

Audit and discharge: the EU’s annual accounts and resource management are audited by the European Court of Auditors, its external auditor, which as part of its activities draws up for the European Parliament and the Council:

  • an annual report on the activities financed from the general budget, detailing its observations on the annual accounts and underlying transactions;
  • an opinion, based on its audits and given in the annual report in the form of a statement of assurance, on (i) the reliability of the accounts and (ii) the legality and regularity of the underlying transactions involving both revenue collected from taxable persons and payments to final beneficiaries.

The discharge represents the political aspect of the external control of budget implementation and is the decision by which the European Parliament, acting on a Council recommendation, "releases" the Commission (and other EU bodies) from its responsibility for management of a given budget by marking the end of that budget's existence. This discharge procedure may produce three outcomes: (i) the granting; (ii) postponement; (iii) or the refusal of the discharge.

The document also presents a series of tables and detailed technical indicators on (i) the balance sheet; (ii) the economic outturn account; (iii) cashflow tables; (iv) technical annexes concerning the financial statements.

(2) Implementation of the EDPS’s appropriations for the financial year 2015: the document comprises a series of detailed annexes, the most important concerning the implementation of the budget. As regards the EDPS’s expenditure, the summary of financial and budgetary implementation of this institution showed that the payment appropriations available for 2015 amounted to EUR 10 million with 82.61% of these committed.

The implementation of the EDPS’s budget in 2015 was marked by the following:

  • Supervision: the EDPS monitors the processing of personal data in the EU administration and ensures compliance with the data protection rules. The supervisory tasks range from prior checking processing operations likely to present specific risks, to handling complaints and conducting enquiries.
  • Consultation: the EDPS advises the European Commission, the European Parliament and the Council on proposals for new legislation and a wide range of other issues having an impact on data protection.
  • Cooperation: the EDPS cooperates with other data protection authorities in order to promote consistent data protection throughout Europe.

As regards the new activities, the report noted that one of the most significant activities was the creation of a small task-force by mid-2015, with the responsibility of assessing the necessary legal, operational and budgetary means for the future set up of the European Data Protection Board (EDPB).

2015 was also marked by the strengthening of the cooperation agreements with DG Budget of the European Commission but also with other Commission DGs and certain services of the European Parliament.