Report from the Commission. Member States’ replies to the Court of Auditors’ 2011 annual report

This report is an analysis of the Member States' replies to the European Court of Auditors' annual report for budgetary year 2011. It is in accordance with the provisions of article 162(5) of the Financial Regulation applicable to the General Budget of the European Union.

For 2011, the Court made further modifications to the presentation of its report, primarily by adding two new chapters. The Court gave a clean opinion on the accounts and it estimated the most likely error rate for the budget as a whole at 3.9% which is similar to last year's overall error rate of 3.7%. The figure of 3.9% now includes errors in cross-compliance for both “Agriculture: market and direct support” and “Rural development” following a change in the Court’s methodology. Without this change, the figure would have been 3.8%.

The majority of replies from Member States were received within the scheduled timeline. As in previous years, the quality varied considerably from one Member State to another. In some cases replies were of a very high standard, while in others it was apparent that very little quality time had been dedicated to the replies.

Member States reiterated their commitment to partnership with the Commission and the Court in order to ensure sound financial management of EU funds. For instance, three quarters of all Member States have expressed an interest in extending tripartite meetings, (which already exist in the Cohesion policy area), to Rural development.

Both the Commission and the Member States have expressed their commitment to tackling Rural development issues in order to reduce the error rate. DG AGRI has launched an action plan and as indicated in their replies, Member States are already taking some remedial action in order to address Rural development issues.

In the Cohesion policy as a whole, although there have been significant improvements, concrete and sustained actions are required by both Member States and the Commission to ensure improved results. For this programming period DG REGIO and DG EMPL will continue targeted actions. These will include focusing audits on more risky areas and financial actors, careful monitoring of actions taken by national authorities interrupting/suspending payments and applying financial corrections where justified.

For the next programming period, several measures have been proposed by the Commission and are being discussed in the inter institutional process. These measures include wider use of simplified costs, quarterly focused reporting by Member States to the Commission, stricter eligibility rules and the introduction of net financial corrections and management declarations.

EUR-Lex: COM(2013)118: Follow the progress of this report through the decision-making procedure http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/HIS/?uri=COM:2013:118:FIN

EUR-Lex: SWD(2013)61: Commission Staff Working Document accompanying the report http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=SWD:2013:061:FIN

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