2015 discharge: EU general budget, European Data Protection Supervisor

The European Parliament decided to grant discharge to the European Data Protection Supervisor in respect of the implementation of the budget of the Court for the financial year 2015.

In its resolution accompanying the decision on discharge, adopted by 508 votes to 111 with 4 abstentions, Parliament noted with satisfaction the fact that the Court of Auditors in its 2015 annual report indicated no significant weaknesses in respect of the audited topics relating to human resources and procurement for the Data Supervisor.

The payments as a whole for the year ended on 31 December 2015 for administrative expenditure were free from material error.

Financial and budgetary management: Parliament welcomed the improved result: in 2015, the Supervisor had a total allocated budget of EUR 8 760 417 (compared to EUR 8 012 953 in 2014) and that the implementation rate was 96 % (compared to 92 % in 2014).

Supervisor’s actions: Parliament welcomed the advisory role played by the Supervisor during the development of legislation in the data protection package (the General Data Protection Regulation and the Data Protection Directive), the Europol reform and the Passenger Name Record Directive, the EU-US Privacy Shield as well as its opinion on the First reform package on the Common European Asylum System (the Eurodac, EASO and Dublin regulations) as well as its involvement in the setting-up of the European Data Protection Board.

Members made a series of observations and recommendations to the Supervisor:

• extend the scope of the concept of performance-based budgeting (PBB) in its daily activities: this concept should not apply only to the Supervisor’s budget as a whole but should also include the setting of specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and time-based (SMART) targets to individual departments, units and staffs’ annual plans;
• pursue its efforts to ensure that its recruitment and promotions policy is as gender balanced as possible;
• reward the individual members of staff who contribute most to its well-being activities;
• submit to the discharge authority a track record of cases of conflicts of interests identified;
• join the Inter-Institutional Agreement on a Mandatory Transparency Register, when it is set up;
• lay down clear binding rules regarding “revolving doors”;
• improve its communications policy in relation with Union citizens.

Members called on the Supervisor to include in its annual activity report:

• detailed information on missions undertaken by its members and staff in its annual activity report since the information provided was not sufficiently detailed in terms of transparency and cost-effectiveness guarantees;
• the findings of the small task force set up in July 2015 which assessed the legal, operational and budgetary means for the creation of the European Data Protection Board;
• exhaustive information on all the human resources at the Supervisor’s disposal, broken down according to grade, sex and nationality.

Members took note of the Supervisor’s plan to comply with the inter-institutional agreement to reduce staff by 5 % over a period of five years. The Commission is called on the Commission to exempt agencies in the justice and home affairs area, as well as the Supervisor, from the general 5 % staffing cut, since in the current political climate these bodies are being requested to take on ever-increasing workloads.

Lastly, Parliament encouraged the increasing contribution of the Supervisor to solutions driving innovation by increasing transparency, user control and accountability in big data processing.