EU budget committee criticises EU agencies

A rather critical text containing a draft Council resolution on the financing of the differenct decentralised agencies of the European Union has been forwarded to COREPER these days.

Following a report by the European Court of Auditors (Special Report No 5/2008) the draft COREPER resolution

NOTES WITH CONCERN the general findings of the Court that the audited decentralised agencies do not plan their activities adequately nor, for most of them, have at their disposal sound tools for monitoring their activities, and that the reporting of the activities and the evaluation of the results need to be improved.

The phrase "notes with concern" is rather alarming, and it looks as if the observed agencies are in quite some troubles.

According to the Court of Audiors' report these agencies are:

• the European Environment Agency;

• the European Food Safety Authority;

• the European Medicines Agency;

• the European Maritime Safety Agency;

• the European Network and Information Security Agency;

• the European Foundation for the the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions;

• the European Agency for the Management of Operational Cooperation at the External Borders of the Member States; and

• the European Agency for Safety and Health at Work

The executive summary of the 49 pages long report remarks that:

"IV. The agencies did not make ex ante evaluations of their programmes, nor did they draw up multiannual programming documents intended to enable them to set medium-term result and impact objectives together with performance indicators.

V. While the agencies all drew up annual work programmes, these provided little precise information concerning the resources to be allocated to the various actions and the results expected.

VI. Monitoring tools were still fairly rudimentary in most of the agencies. Information on the use made of the resources allocated to their activities was often scattered. It would be of benefit to promote to all agencies the best practice monitoring systems identified in certain of them. The Commission's role could be reviewed in this respect.

Both, the Auditors' report and the strength of the draft EU Council resolution show that the planning and execution of the work - and especially the financing - of the respective agencies of the European Union is inappropriate and needs revision.

In fact, these should be issues European media take more serious. As in this case, both the Court of Auditors' report and the planned Council conclusions are public, and I would expect the mainstream journalists to follow up on this.

But I doubt that anybody cares if the European Union is poorly organising and supervising its activities - apart from some strange Eurosceptics concentrated around a little island on the western shores of the European continent...