19.12.2006   

EN

Official Journal of the European Union

C 312/93

1-2

3-6

7-12

1.

The European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia (hereinafter 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.

2.

Table 1 summarises the Centre's competences and activities. Key information from the financial statements drawn up by the Centre for the financial year 2005 is shown in Tables 2, 3 and 4.

3.

This Statement is addressed to the European Parliament and the Council in accordance with Article 185(2) of Council Regulation (EC, Euratom) No 1605/2002 (2); it was drawn up following an examination of the Centre's accounts, as required by Article 248 of the Treaty establishing the European Community.

4.

The Centre's accounts for the financial year ended 31 December 2005 (3) were drawn up by its Director, pursuant to Article 12 of Regulation (EC) No 1035/97, and sent to the Court, which is required to provide a statement of assurance on their reliability and on the legality and regularity of the underlying transactions.

5.

The Court conducted its audit in accordance with its policies and standards, which are based on international auditing standards that have been adapted to the Community context. The audit was planned and performed to obtain reasonable assurance that the accounts are reliable and the underlying transactions are legal and regular.

6.

The Court has thus obtained a reasonable basis for the statement expressed below.

7.

Although the rate of commitment for the appropriations for the financial year 2005 was over 90 %, it was found that more than 50 % of the commitments for administrative expenditure were carried over and that in general there was a high rate of cancellation of the appropriations carried over (between 15 % and 25 %, depending on the title). This situation shows that there is still a need for the Centre to improve its expenditure planning and the way it monitors the implementation of this expenditure. Transfers between budget headings need to be justified and documented in accordance with the provisions in force.

8.

The Court noted that no activity-based management had been brought in, despite the Centre's financial regulation making provision for its introduction, on the lines of that applied to the general budget, with a view to improving the monitoring of performance. In this context, achieving the Centre's aims should not mean merely carrying out a series of tasks. It should rather be seen as contributing to the goals laid down in its basic Regulation. The Centre's work programme should, in principle, express this contribution in operational and measurable terms.

9.

The Centre had no system for planning and managing its equipment acquisitions. Furthermore, it did not make any cyclical checks on its inventory, although this would have improved the inventory's reliability.

10.

The Centre's internal control system suffered from various shortcomings. The financial circuits set up by the authorising officer had not been described. The systems whereby the authorising officer and his delegatees supplied information to the accounting officer had in particular not been validated by the latter. The principle of the segregation of duties was not applied strictly, especially between the duties of initiation and verification. Furthermore, for commitments the lists of ex ante verifications should include sound financial management criteria.

11.

The rule whereby members of the selection boards must always be of a grade equivalent to or higher than that of the post to be filled was not always complied with.

12.

The invitations to tender issued by the Centre do not offer much by way of explanation as regards the minimum quality of bids and the weighting of price factors. As a result of this situation, an adequate level of transparency cannot be guaranteed and risks are entailed as regards the quality of the products and services to be provided. Barring a specific reason to the contrary, the price-quality ratio method should be used as it ensures that the goods and services to be purchased are of the highest possible quality.