(2004/C 33 E/240)

WRITTEN QUESTION E-2204/03

by Gabriele Stauner (PPE-DE) to the Commission

(2 July 2003)

Subject:   Eurostat and resignation of Commission's Internal Auditor

In a memorandum dated 11 June 2003, Mr Jules W. Muis, the Commission's Internal Auditor, informed Vice-President Kinnock of his intention to step down on 1 April 2004 after only three years in his post.

Can the Commission state whether it sees any connection between the announcement of that resignation and its decision of the same day concerning the inspection of Eurostat contracts by the Commission's internal auditing department?

Can the Commission confirm that the Internal Auditor had urged a fundamentally more comprehensive audit of contracts concluded by Eurostat and of the subsidies awarded by the office, and had wanted to inspect not only the contract award procedures but also the implementation of the contracts and the payments associated with them?

Can the Commission explain why it now wishes to authorise such an inspection only in exceptional cases and after consultation with the Secretary-General of the Commission, as the answer by Mr Kinnock of 17 June 2003 to the questionnaire from the Committee on Budgetary Control appears to suggest?

Can the Commission state to what extent the restrictive conditions imposed by it are compatible with the independence of the Internal Auditor as guaranteed by the Financial Regulation?

Answer given by Mr Kinnock on behalf of the Commission

(5 September 2003)

The Director General of the IAS, Mr Muis, gave advance notice of his intention to leave the Commission in over nine month's time in a letter dated 11 June. On the same date, the weekly meeting of the Commission decided, in keeping with Parliament's resolution of 8th April and after the relevant preparatory work, to mandate action by the Internal Audit Service (IAS), to ‘examine the legality and the regularity of all contracts concluded by Eurostat since 1999 and to include in its investigation those contracts concluded by other Commission services’. The Commission does not see any connection between these separate events.

As the Honourable Member will know, in his appearance at the Cocobu on 7 July, Mr Muis confirmed that there is no connection. Specifically commenting on the ‘speculation … about Eurostat’ Mr Muis said ‘Eurostat is not the reason that I leave’ and ‘Eurostat was not the trigger of my resignation. I just want to make that very, very clear’.

In the course of necessary discussions with and between Services relating to the application of the 11 June Communication, the DG of Internal Audit quite properly raised the issue of whether the scope of the examination of concluded contracts and grants would exclude assessment of the execution of certain contracts and grants. In response, Vice President Kinnock confirmed that the Commission decision of 11th June does not, by wording or implication, exclude such an assessment in any way. It is, of course, clear to all concerned that the recognised resource constraints and the need to fulfil the IAS task inside the essential deadline mean that — to respect the agreed delivery times and in view of the resource constraints — an examination of the execution of all sampled contracts/grants would not be possible. If the IAS preliminary analysis provided good reasons to examine the execution of contracts or grants, then Mr Muis should decide on that in consultation with the Secretary General of the Commission in his capacity as coordinator of Commission actions relating to the Eurostat examinations.

As Cocobu was informed on 17th June, the reason for needing such consultation arises from the fact that the necessarily multiple Eurostat-related activities (which included the DG Budget analysis of all Eurostat internal audit reports, the IAS examination of Eurostat contracts and grants, and the work of the (then) acting DG of Eurostat, Mr Vanden Abeele), required the establishment of a Co-ordination Group in the Commission with an open standing invitation to OLAF to attend and participate. The Group is chaired by the Secretary General of the Commission.

No ‘restrictive conditions’ have been ‘imposed’ by the Commission. The mandate given by the Commission to the IAS seeks to ensure that, taking account of the results of discussions with the Cocobu relating to the mandate and delivery date of the examination, Parliament's will is respected and the audit implemented directly … A ‘conventional’ audit would leave the choice of areas to be examined entirely to the internal auditor's expertise and would, therefore, not necessarily guarantee that the terms of Parliament's resolution were fully met. The IAS 2003-2004 Work Programme (finalised in December 2002) includes explicit provision for an in-depth audit of Eurostat which will be launched in the course of the current work year.

Objective testimony to the fact that the IAS examination is not limited to the award of Eurostat contracts is provided by the nature and substance of the IAS preliminary analysis given to the Commission on 7 July which facilitated the comprehensive action taken on 9th July. That analysis included references to contract/grant awards procedures and practices and to the implementation of such contracts and grants based on the work of Eurostat's internal audit capability. Such a comprehensive approach and audit product would simply have not been possible if the work of the IAS had been subject to ‘restrictive conditions’ as asserted by the Honourable Member in her question.