Report from the Commission to the Council and the European Parliament. Member States’ replies to the European Court of Auditors’ 2013 annual report

This report is an analysis of the Member States' replies to the European Court of Auditors' (the Court) annual report for budgetary year 2013 and fulfils the obligations defined in Article 162(5) of the Financial Regulation.

The Court's annual report for 2013 stated that the consolidated accounts were free of material misstatements and that revenue and commitments taken as a whole were legal and regular. The Court's audit also concluded that overall, payments were materially affected by error and that the supervisory and control systems were in general, partially effective. The audit results showed that overall the estimated error rate was 4.7%, down by 0.1 percentage points on last year's rate, but still above the materiality level.

The Court also pointed out that a significant positive factor in 2013 was the increased impact of corrective measures applied by the Member States and the Commission. In addition, the Court's audit also revealed that for a large proportion of transactions affected by error in the shared management areas, authorities in Member States had sufficient information available to have detected and corrected the errors before claiming reimbursement from the Commission. Policy areas rural development, environment, fisheries and health as well as regional policy, energy and transport had the highest estimated error rate - 6.7% and 6.9% respectively.

• Primary Source

EUR-Lex: COM(2015)89: Follow the progress of this report through the decision-making procedure http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/HIS/?uri=COM:2015:089:FIN

ESO: Background information: European Court of Auditors: Annual report concerning the financial year 2013 http://www.europeansources.info/record/annual-report-concerning-the-financial-year-2013-annual-report-on-the-implementation-of-the-budget/

EUR-Lex: SWD(2015)18: Commission Staff Working Document accompanying the report http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=SWD:2015:018:FIN

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