Communication from the Commission to the European Parliament, the Council and the Court of Auditors. Synthesis of the Commission’s management achievements in 2013

In adopting this synthesis report, which is based on the assurances and reservations registered by the Directors-General and heads of service in their annual activity reports, the Commission takes overall political responsibility for the management of the EU budget.

In the area of the direct management of EU funds, the Commission considers that strengthened internal control systems and genuine simplification of eligibility and other rules have been key elements in aiming at a reduction in error rates. However, more detailed controls are costly and the Commission considers that additional controls should be performed only where the potential benefits can be shown to outweigh the costs to the Commission and the beneficiaries.

The financial scope of the reservations made by Directors-General increased as compared with 2012. This is the result of additional efforts, in terms of both resources and methodology, to assess more accurately the amounts at risk and residual error rates. It is certainly not due to a deterioration in financial management by the services. As the programmes and control systems are multi-annual, the real effect of weaknesses of the supervisory and control systems and of the management of the EU budget can be judged only by taking into account the financial impact of corrective measures in subsequent reporting years.

In this report, the Commission takes stock of the main achievements in improving the performance measurement and reporting systems. It reiterates its strong commitment to strengthen further these systems.

• Primary Source

EUR-Lex: COM(2014)342: Follow the progress of this communication through the decision-making procedure http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/HIS/?uri=COM:2014:342:FIN

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