2015 discharge: European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC)

PURPOSE: to grant discharge to the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) for the financial year 2015.

NON-LEGISLATIVE ACT: Decision (EU) 2017/1657 of the European Parliament on discharge in respect of the implementation of the budget of the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control for the financial year 2015.

CONTENT: with the present decision, the European Parliament grants discharge to the Director of the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control for the implementation of the latter’s budget for the financial year 2015.

This decision is in line with the European Parliament's resolution adopted on 27 April 2017 and comprises a series of observations that form an integral part of the discharge decision (please refer to the summary of the opinion of 27 April 2017).

Amongst Parliament’s main observations in the resolution accompanying the discharge decision, it acknowledged the fact that the Centre further revised its independence policy and has created an internal procedure for the implementation of that policy. The updated policy was endorsed by the Centre's management board in June 2016 which requires all staff to submit a declaration of interests before taking up duty.

Parliament also noted that various weaknesses were found affecting the transparency of the Centre's procurement procedures, including a lack of a clear link with the Centre's annual work programme, insufficient substantiation of the estimated contract value or absence of a financial benchmark to assess the tenderer's financial capacity. The Centre implemented a new version of its procurement monitoring application in 2016 which makes a clear link between the procurement procedures and the annual work programme.

In addition, Parliament noted that the Centre has taken specific initiatives in order to increase transparency relating to its contacts with lobbyists, and that an internal procedure on meetings with the pharmaceutical sector is under preparation.

As regards the issue of Ebola, the Centre established two annual internal evaluations since 2015 on its deployment for Ebola in West Africa.