EU Parliament fumes as Council dodges financial scrutiny for 13 years

The European Parliament will likely reject the EU Council’s 2021 budget implementation on Wednesday, continuing a 13-year row that raises questions on democratic accountability and competency hoarding.

The annual financial discharge is a process whereby the EU Parliament, acting on a recommendation of the Council, approves and issues recommendations on the EU budget implementation in the institutions and agencies.

Since 2009, however, a political disagreement between the two – with the Council refusing to submit to parliamentary scrutiny – has led to an institutional stalemate, as the Parliament is set to reject the EU Council’s 2021 financial discharge for the 13th year in a row.

“I consider it an utterly arrogant attitude because all the other European institutions are cooperating and gladly accepting the parliamentary supervision of the European Parliament”, the discharge rapporteur MEP Mikuláš Peksa (Greens/EFA) told Euractiv.

According to Peksa, the Parliament can only evaluate the Council’s finances via the information from the European Court of Auditors’ annual report on the EU budget and the information that can be found on the Council’s website. But this is not enough, he says.

“We are unable to ask them any questions and get answers for the questions, which is very much like jeopardising the report”, Peksa said.

This leads to a situation where the Parliament only has access to “very basic data” and thus cannot determine whether the Council “is adhering to the rules and spending properly”.

When asked to schedule a hearing and to fill in the routine questionnaire for the 2021 discharge procedure, the Council rejected cooperating by referring back to the disagreement between the two institutions on whether the Parliament has the mandate to scrutinise the Council’s spending.

“This state of play is unacceptable because we are talking about the money of European taxpayers, and they have responsibility for it,” Peksa said.

Democratic accountability – or lack thereof

As long as the Council does not change its political stance, “I don’t expect them to receive the discharge, neither for 2021 nor any time soon”, Peksa added, as “all main political forces” agree.

This stalemate has raised eyebrows among transparency advocates, who see the discharge as a necessary mechanism to increase budgetary accountability.

“We believe the Council should be scrutinised by the Parliament to allow greater transparency on how the Council spends public money”, Shari Hinds, Policy Officer at Transparency International EU, told Euractiv, adding that “the accountability of the Council is heavily affected by its failure to be granted discharge”.

In contrast, the Council downplays the concerns, arguing that the European Court of Auditors analyses its spending in the annual EU budget report and that “the Council is democratically accountable to European citizens via the accountability of the members of the Council to Member States’ national parliaments,” an EU official told Euractiv.

The European Ombudsman and the European Court of Auditors, the EU’s watchdogs, rejected Euractiv’s request for comment.

Competency hoarding?

Parliament’s discharge power is based on Articles 317 and 319 TFEU, which give it a mandate to grant discharge to the Commission to implement the EU budget. However, the two institutions disagree on the exact scope of these articles.

Besides the legal disagreement, the EU Council also criticises the Parliament’s politicised approach to granting discharge.

“The European Parliament has developed over the years an additional practice of pronouncing itself on policies and activities of other institutions in general. The Council believes that this goes far beyond the scope of budgetary discharge”, an EU official said.

The questionnaire sent to the Council – seen by Euractiv – includes further topics unrelated to spending, such as questions on cybersecurity, whistleblowing channels, and staff well-being.

The solutions, according to the EU Parliament, could include treaty reform, an interinstitutional agreement, or the involvement of the Court of Justice of the European Union to shed clarity on the meaning of the TFEU articles. However, for the moment, this remains a frozen political conflict.

(Max Griera | Euractiv.com)