2001 discharge: European Centre on racism and xenophobia

The European Parliament adopted a resolution drafted by Freddy BLAK (EUL/NGL, Denmark) giving discharge to the European Monitoring on Racism and Xenophobia for the 2001 financial year. (Please see the document dated 20/10/03.) Parliament encouraged the Centre to continue its efforts to follow its operational activities closely and to make further efforts to resolve recurrent problems in its relations with the Raxen network. It noted that such problems are 'systemic' in nature, and there is scope for developing a harmonised approach between Agencies in dealing with such problems. The Centre should intensify its contacts with other agencies faced with similar problems in their relations with networks of national points in order for a 'best practice approach' to be developed and applied. As a general point with regard to the Agencies, Parliament expressed its concern that the Commission's Internal Audit Service (IAS) does not carry out any checks on the Agencies. This implies that Articles 71 and 72 of Regulation 2343/2002/EC are not being adhered to and that, in practice, an outside control of the quality of management and control systems of the agencies is left to be carried out in the context of the Court of Auditors control. Parliament called on the Commission to ensure that the necessary resources are made available so that the IAS is in a position to fulfill its tasks with regard to the internal control systems in the Agencies. Finally, it asked the Commission to submit a proposal for an amendment to the constituent acts of the Agencies to ensure that their directors may in future be appointed only with the assent of Parliament. �