2005 discharge: European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions

 The committee adopted the report by Edit HERCZOG (PES, HU) granting discharge to the the European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions for 2005. In its accompanying resolution, it made a number of general points concerning the majority of the EU agencies:

- the ever-growing number of Community Agencies and the activities of some of them do not seem to form part of an overall policy framework, and "the remits of some Agencies do not always reflect the real needs of the Union or the expectations of its citizens”;

- the Commission should therefore define an overall policy framework and should present a cost-benefit study before the setting up of any new Agency, and the Court of Auditors should give its opinion on this study before Parliament takes its decision;

- every 5 years, the Commission should present a study on the added value of every existing Agency; where the evaluation is negative in the case of a particular Agency the latter’s mandate should be reformulated or the Agency should be closed;

- the Commission should improve administrative and technical support to the Agencies, given the growing complexity of the Community’s administrative rules and technical problems;

- the Agencies should improve their cooperation and benchmarking with actors in the field;

- the Commission should harmonise the format of the annual reporting by the Agencies to develop performance indicators which would allow a comparison of their efficiency.

In its specific remarks concerning the EFILWC, the committee called on the Foundation to pay greater attention to carry-over rates with regard to commitments for administrative expenditure and operating activities, which remained high. It also urged the Foundation to present a work programme "which expresses its contribution in operational and measurable terms", and encouraged it to continue efforts to improve its communications to ensure that the public is better informed about the findings of its studies, thereby enhancing the public debate on important issues such as the effects and causes of restructuring measures by companies.