2022 discharge: General budget of the EU - Commission

PURPOSE: to grant discharge to the European Commission for the financial year 2022.

NON-LEGISLATIVE ACT: Decision (EU, Euratom) 2024/2226 of the European Parliament on discharge in respect of the implementation of the general budget of the European Union for the financial year 2022, Section III – Commission and executive agencies.

CONTENT: the European Parliament decided to grant discharge to the Commission for the implementation of its budget for the financial year 2022.

This decision is in line with the European Parliament's resolution adopted on 11 April 2024 and comprises a series of observations that form an integral part of the discharge decision (please refer to the summary dated 11 April 2024).

In this resolution, Parliament highlighted the importance of the Union budget for achieving the Union’s political priorities and highlighted the crucial role the Union budget played in 2022 in addressing the consequences of Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine. It also recalled the importance of the Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF) in facing the economic downturn following the COVID-19 pandemic and that the RRF delivery model puts much lighter requirements on the Commission, as well as reducing the control burden from the Commission towards the Member States.

Parliament noted that in 2022, 98.5 % of the available commitment appropriations were used (EUR 179.4 billion out of EUR 182.2 billion). It expressed concern that the Court estimates the level of error for the 2022 expenditure to be 4.2 % (3 % in 2021 and 2.7 % in 2020). Members noted with concern that the total outstanding commitments, which represent future debts if not decommitted, reached an all-time high of EUR 450 billion in 2022, caused by both increased commitments related to NGEU (with all National Recovery and Resilience Plans adopted in 2022) and the slow start of the implementation of the 2021-2027 programming period. They noted with concern that Union debt increased from EUR 236.7 billion in 2021 to EUR 344.3 billion in 2022.

The Commission is invited to:

- step up efforts to improve transparency in the use of funds, including as regards information on final beneficiaries;

- identify ways to help Member States accelerate the use of Union funds, and reduce the level of outstanding commitments;

- provide sufficient measures to protect the Union budget from the different risks identified in particular the RAL, the increasing debt, the increased budget exposure including to Ukraine, the increasing inflation, etc;

- ensure the protection of the Union budget by making general and systematic use of digital and automated systems for reporting, monitoring and audit and urgently establish a compulsory integrated and interoperable system building on, but not limited to, existing tools and databases in the context of the concluded recast of the Financial Regulation.