2015 discharge: European Union's Judicial Cooperation Unit (Eurojust)

PURPOSE: to grant discharge to EUROJUST in respect of the Agency’s budget for the financial year 2015.

NON-LEGISLATIVE ACT: Decision (EU) 2017/1714 of the European Parliament on discharge in respect of the implementation of the budget of Eurojust for the financial year 2015.

CONTENT: with the present decision, the European Parliament grants discharge to EUROJUST’s Administrative Director for the implementation of its 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 regretted that Eurojust faced budgetary availability issues due to known structural problems with its funding and that for the second successive year was forced to resort to mitigation measures subject to an amending budget. It also regretted that the financial uncertainty with which Eurojust was confronted required the postponement of some of its ongoing activities and the deferral of valuable technological developments.

Parliament called on Eurojust and the Commission to solve these known structural problems and secure a proper level of funding for the coming years.

Eurojust is currently in the process of preparing for the transition to its new premises. Construction started in spring 2015 and the expected move was planned for spring 2017. Eurojust should report further to the discharge authority on the transition to its new premises, as well as to outline total incurred transition costs.

Lastly, regretting that in its 2015 annual report, Eurojust stated that corruption is not a Union priority, Parliament noted that this statement was contradicted by the 90 corruption cases for which Eurojust expertise was requested in 2015 (twice as many as in 2014) according to the Eurojust annual report. Greece, Romania and Croatia were the Member States to request the most assistance in corruption-related cases.