Liberal and Democrat MEPs today reiterated their demand for more political accountability in the Member States for money spent by their own authorities. Jan Mulder (Netherlands, VVD), ALDE coordinator of the Budgetary Control Committee and spokesperson on the EU 2010 discharge, demands that Member States, who are responsible for managing 80% of payments from the EU budget, publish yearly public statements certifying how EU money is spent. "These so-called Annual Summaries are necessary to make inadequate management by national authorities transparent. Member States have a duty to give account of how they manage EU funds. So far however, these summaries are only partly available to the European Parliament despite the fact that the Parliament signed the Inter-institutional Agreement under which Member States agreed to these annual summaries"

For the 17th year in a row the Court of Auditors, the institution that oversees the EU's accounts, issued a negative report, denouncing an error rate of 3.7 per cent in the 2010 figures – above the required level of 2 per cent and up from 3.2 per cent the previous year.
 
According to Gerben-Jan Gerbrandy (Netherlands, D66), ALDE member of the Budgetary Control Committee, it is crucial to better evaluate EU policies: "As we face more and more criticism towards Europe, we need to show the EU citizens that with the EU budget we can make a difference. Therefore we need to focus even more on the effectiveness of European projects. The European Commission should take this much more seriously, not just in reporting, but also politically towards the Member States. The European Parliament should organize a yearly plenary debate on the effectiveness of European funded projects".

Background

The plenary vote on the approval of the EU accounts for 2010 will take place in May 2012. The European Parliament is the EU budget discharge authority. Following the audit and finalization of the annual accounts, Parliament - on a recommendation by the Council of Ministers - decides whether or not to grant discharge to the Commission and other EU bodies for their spending in 2010. The Council meanwhile approved the 2010 accounts, although with opposition of the Netherlands, Sweden and UK.

The discharge for budget implementation is the decision by which the European Parliament "releases" the Commission from its responsibility for management of a given budget by marking the end of that budget's existence.