On Friday 4 May 2012 the European Court of Auditors received a visit from Mr Hiroyuki Shigematsu, the BoA President, and his delegation. The delegation, including H. E. Mr Takashi Suetsuna, the Japanese Ambassador to Luxembourg, was welcomed by ECA President Vítor Caldeira and ECA Member Gijs de Vries. The two delegations discussed among other the mandates of the ECA and the EU SAIs regarding audits of EU subsidies; fiscal discipline in the EU Member countries, including audit activities related to the European debt crisis; and the INTOSAI Working Group on Accountability and on the Audit of Disaster-related aid.
Photo: From left to right: ECA Member Gijs de Vries, the President of the Board of Audit of Japan Hiroyuki Shigematsu, ECA President Vítor Caldeira and the Japanese Ambassador to Luxembourg H. E. Mr Takashi Suetsuna
CRIS is the information system put in place by the Commission to support the management of external actions. CRIS enables all staff involved in external action management to work on a common database. It provides data concerning the different phases of management and feeds financial data into the Commission's accounting system ABAC. The Court found that CRIS is mostly effective in responding to the Commission's information needs in the field of external actions. However, after ten years of development, CRIS is still subject to persisting shortcomings. These concern in particular the definition of CRIS's role with regard to the Commission's accounting system, weaknesses in data coding, insufficient effectiveness in ensuring data integrity and, more generally, insufficient security of the system and its data. Press release
The May issue of the ECA Journal is out
Luxembourg 01/05/2012
The European Court of Auditors has published the May issue of the ECA Journal, featuring interviews with two new ECA Members, Pietro Russo (Italy) and Kevin Cardiff (Ireland).
Click here to download a pdf version of the ECA Journal.
Printed copies can be obtained for free via EU Bookshop.
When significant deficiencies are identified in the Member States' management and control systems for Structural Funds, the Commission has to ensure that past irregularities are corrected and that systems are improved for the future. In this report the Court assessed whether the Commission dealt in a satisfactory way with deficiencies identified in the Member States' systems. Press release Press pack
The European Court of Auditors assessed the objectives and outputs of 27 randomly selected transport infrastructure projects in seaports which were co-financed between 2000 and 2006 through the European Regional Development Fund and the Cohesion Fund. The Court found that only 11 out of the 27 projects were effective in supporting transport policy objectives. In addition, some constructions had not been completed, some were not in use and others will need considerable further investment before they can be put into effective use. The Court’s report puts forward various reasons to explain these findings and makes recommendations to address the shortcomings noted so as to improve future EU-spending in seaports. Press release Press pack
Budgetary control of the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF), the European Financial Stabilisation Mechanism (EFSM) and the European Stability Mechanism (ESM)
