30.12.2004   

EN

Official Journal of the European Union

C 324/91

1

2-5

6-14

1.

The European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia (‘the Centre’) was established by Council Regulation (EC) No 1035/97 of 2 June 1997 (1). The Centre’s primary tasks are to provide the Union and the Member States with reliable information on racism, xenophobia and anti-semitism in the Union and to cooperate with the Council of Europe in these areas. Table 1 is based on information forwarded by the Centre and gives a brief overview of its responsibilities and activities.

2.

This opinion is addressed to the European Parliament and the Council, in accordance with Article 185(2) of Council Regulation (EC, Euratom) No 1605/2002 (2).

3.

The Court has examined the annual accounts of the Centre for the financial year ended 31 December 2003. In accordance with Article 12(8) of Council Regulation (EC) No 1035/97, the budget was implemented on the Director’s responsibility. This responsibility includes the drawing-up and presentation of the accounts (3), in accordance with the internal financial provisions adopted under Article 12(12) of Council Regulation (EC) No 1035/97. The Court of Auditors is required under Article 248 of the Treaty establishing the European Community to examine these accounts.

4.

The Court performed its audit in accordance with its auditing policies and standards. These have been adapted from generally accepted international auditing standards to reflect the specific nature of the Community context. It examined the accounting documents and applied the audit procedures it considered necessary in that context.

5.

The Court thus obtained reasonable assurance that the annual accounts for the financial year ended 31 December 2003 are reliable. Subject to the matter described in paragraph 13, the Court obtained reasonable assurance that the underlying transactions, taken as a whole, are legal and regular.

6.

The implementation of the appropriations of the financial year 2003 and the appropriations carried over from the previous financial year is shown in Table 2  (4). The Centre’s balance sheet and revenue and expenditure account for the financial year 2003 are summarised in Tables 3 and 4.

7.

The level of carry-overs of appropriations under Title III, Operating activities, remained high, but was lower than the previous year (36 % in 2003 and 40 % in 2002). The Court once again (5) draws the Centre’s attention to the necessity of observing the principle of annuality more fully when planning and monitoring its activities.

8.

Of the appropriations carried over from the financial year 2002 to the financial year 2003 (1,5 million euro), 20 % were cancelled at the year-end. This is a large percentage, showing that the justification for the automatic carry-overs of 2002 appropriations was poor, especially in the case of provisional commitments. Carry-overs of appropriations must be strictly limited to obligations duly contracted at the close of the financial year.

9.

On 3 March 2003 the Centre signed a convention with the Commission concerning the establishment of an information network for the candidate countries in central and eastern Europe. The project receives funding via Phare subsidies totalling 845 000 euro. In accordance with Article 4 of the convention the Centre received an advance of 676 000 euro (80 %) in 2003. Contrary to the principles of budget unity (6), the Centre did not use an amending budget to include the amount of the 2003 Phare subsidy in its budget.

10.

As the Court has already pointed out, in its 2002 Report (7), the Centre should establish an efficient system for managing and monitoring revenue to be collected. A system of that type would avoid the delays that were observed in the issue of recovery orders and the recovery of VAT.

11.

As of 31 December 2003 the recovery orders relating to the Austrian authorities’ reimbursement of rent for the period May to August 2003 (37 017 euro) had not been drawn up.

12.

An amount of 333 474 euro of VAT paid in 2000 has still not been recovered. If exchange-rate differences are taken into account, the total is understated by 19 242 euro. The Centre must step up its efforts to obtain the VAT reimbursement. Furthermore, the VAT accounts are not regularly analysed and justified. As an example, one VAT reimbursement of around 78 000 euro had not been included as budget revenue and remained as an entry in a suspense account.

13.

In 2003 the Centre placed three contracts (for a total of 181 078 euro) with the same supplier, through the negotiated procedure, even though each of the contracts exceeded the 13 800 euro ceiling that applies to that procedure and the conditions that allow the limit to be exceeded were inapplicable.

14.

The Centre invited applications from internal candidates for two recruitments. In one case there was only one applicant, and in the other only two. In view of the Centre’s size, this type of procedure limits competition between candidates.