Brief Introduction
The European Court of Auditors (COA) was established in 1977 under the financial provisions treaty of 1975, following a desire and an agreement between the 15 states to audit the budget of the European Community. The 1975 budgetary reforms allowed the European Parliament (EP) a more active role in budgetary decisions. Due to the enlargement process of the Europe from the EC to the European Union (EU) this has increased to 27 member states. Ultimately 'the European Court of Auditors checks that EU funds are correctly accounted for and spent in compliance with the rules and legislation' (European Court of Auditors, 2011).
Amsterdam Treaty
The Amsterdam Treaty, which came into force in 1999, increased the role of the COA making the auditing process more transparent. This allowed the different institutions to be more efficient with their budgets whilst allowing the COA to keep a close eye on what is being spent where. The institutions must " report at any instance of irregularity" when examining and financial irregularities of the institutions. The Court of Auditors sole responsibility is to examine the EU’s financial affairs. It was set up to rectify the problem of inadequate control over the community’s resources. The 1975 budget treaty replaced the old auditor board with the new court of auditors, which began functioning in October 1977.
Development
The 1975 treaty extended the courts authority to cover all bodies of the and all payments before the year is closed. In December 1977 a financial regulation, through member states, enabled the court complete administrative and budgetary autonomy
The 1992 Maastricht Treaty, elevated the Court to institutional status and also emphasises that the Court has ‘special importance. (Ref Desmond Dinan). Thr Amsterdam Treaty further emphasised the role of Court of Auditors its fight against fraud, as it strengthened its prerogatives against other EU institution. The Nice Treaty brought in the development of one member of the court per member state in Eu. In Addition gave the court option of organising its chambers to in order to meet it growing workload due to enlargement.The Constitutional Treaty, no longer list the CoA as an EU institution. Its stature is not downgraded and the reason was to clarify the EU institutional structure by highlighting only the core decision making and judicial institutions.
Structure
Court consists of one representative of each member state. Therefore there are 27 members who are appointed for six year renewable terms. Each member has experience with the control of public funds in their own countries. Each member state nominates a member of the court. The council than appoints the members unanimously, after consulting the European parliament.
N.R Parliament authority – Parliament insists on a right to approval as to extend its authority, an example of this would be in 1989 where parliament rejected two court appointees which resulted in one member state changing its nominee (ref – dinan)
The court elects one of its members as president to serve a renewable three-year term. The court is housed in Luxembourg and has a staff of 750. The CoA is supposed to be completely independent of national governments.
The current serving president of the court is Vítor Manuel da Silva Caldeira, from Portugal (http://europa.eu/institutions/inst/auditors/index_en.htm)
Previous Presidents - Sir Norman Price (1977, United Kingdom), Michael Murphy (1977, Ireland), Pierre Lelong (1981, France), Marcel Mart (1984, Luxembourg), Aldo Angioi (1990, Italy), André Middlehoek (1992, Netherlands), Bernhard Friedmann (1996, Germany), Jan O. Karlsson (1999, Sweden), Juan Manuel Fabra Vallés (2002, Spain) and Hubert Weber (2006, Austria).
Purpose
Despite its name the CoA has no judicial functions.
The court publishes an annual report on each years budget in November of the following year. In addition they also publish special reports and opinions. All reports are adopted by a majority vote of the courts members. The annual report consists predominantly by a financial management assessment, which involves comparing the general goals and specific targets of EU policies and programs with the results obtained. Special reports on the other hand allow more flexibility than annual reports . Special reports enable the Court to undertake highly critical assessments of EU Policies and Programs, which have led to high media attention.
Before any type of report is adopted, the Court and Commission engage in what is called the ‘procedure contracatitoire’. It is through this whereby the commission tones down the Courts criticisms. In every court publication, there is reply from the commission on the courts findings, which are often politically sensitive. In most cases the court deals with Commissions financial controller and with the directorate-generale for budgets, however on special occasions the president of the Court and the budget commissioner engage in the ‘procere contractitiore’.
Declaration of Assurance
In 1992 the Maastricht Treaty made it a requirement for the court to provide the Council and the Parliament “with a statement of assurance as to the reliability of the accounts and the legality and regularity of the underlying transactions” (Article 248.1 TEC). These statements have been included in all reports since 1995. The introduction of the declaration has led to many conflicts within the institutions. It can be argued that the Courts statements of assurances have been far from reassuring , with the court noting too many errors in respect to EU payments.(Dinan) Despite the discovery that it was member states who caused 90% of the substantial errors in payment transactions, Parliament still took the Commission to task for the courts findings, threatening in 1998 to censure the Commission by not granting discharge of the budget of the 1996 budget.
Bibliography
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