EUU, Alm.del - 2017-18 - Bilag 233: Rapport fra den Europæiske Revisionsret december 2017

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EUU Alm.del Bilag 233
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OURNAL

European Court of Auditors

December 2017

ECA Annual Report 2016

EUU, Alm.del - 2017-18 - Bilag 233: Rapport fra den Europæiske Revisionsret december 2017

PRODUCTION

Rédacteur en chef / Editor in Chief:

Gaston Moonen

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[email protected]

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Directorate of the Presidency

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opinion of the European Court of

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EUU, Alm.del - 2017-18 - Bilag 233: Rapport fra den Europæiske Revisionsret december 2017

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Editorial

The ECA Annual Report: striving to make it more interesting year on year

Interview of Lazaros S. Lazarou, ECA Member

By Gaston Moonen, Directorate of the Presidency

The ECA Annual Report 2016 in numbers

By Kathrin Bornemeier and Gaston Moonen, Directorate of the Presidency

The making of… a look behind the scenes of the Annual Report

By Gaston Moonen, Directorate of the Presidency

Coordination and quality review for the Annual Report – truly team work

By Arjen Lok, Private Oice of Lazaros S. Lazarou, ECA Member, and Nikolaos Kilonis, Directorate

Financing and administering the Union

The Ins and Outs of Translating the Annual Report

By Derek Meijers, Translation, Language Services and Publication Directorate

Auditing results to provide guidance for EU eforts in the future

Interview with Joachim Zeller, MEP and rapporteur for the 2016 Discharge

By Gaston Moonen, Directorate of the Presidency

Presenting the Annual Report to Parliament and Council

By Helena Piron Mäki-Korvela, Directorate of the Presidency

Council Budget Committee discusses audit methodology and results with ECA auditors

By Andreas Bolkart, Directorate of the Presidency

Reaching out to ECA’s national parliaments and Member State authorities

By Gaston Moonen, Directorate of the Presidency

Catching the attention of the media

By Mark Rogerson, Directorate of the Presidency

Reaching out to key stakeholders with our Stakeholder Management System

By Helena Piron Mäki-Korvela, Directorate of the Presidency

The 2016 ECA Annual Report in the media headlines

By Damijan Fišer, Directorate of the Presidency

Enhancing the impact of our Annual Report

By Rimantas Šadžius, ECA Member

'Ipsa scientia potestas est' (Knowledge itself is power): the 2017 edition of the annual

ECA Training Day

By Maryliz Thymaki, Directorate of Human Resources, Finance and General Services

Language is all we have – some thoughts after the irst ECA Clear Language Awards

By Dominiek Braet, Euroclear, content strategist, trainer

Regulatory Impact Analysis discussed at the ECA

By Stéphanie Girard, Private Oice of Danièle Lamarque, ECA Member

REACHING OUT

Visiting the United Nations in New York: exchanging food for thought

By Kristina Maksinen, Directorate External action, security and justice

The ECA at the UN Climate Change Conference COP 23 in Bonn

By Olivier Prigent, Directorate Sustainable use of natural resources, and Katharina Bryan,

Private Oice of Phil Wynn Owen, ECA Member

Deputy Comptroller General of Colombia visits the ECA

By Roberto Gabella Carena, Directorate of the Presidency

FOCUS

Publications in November 2017

EUU, Alm.del - 2017-18 - Bilag 233: Rapport fra den Europæiske Revisionsret december 2017

The ECA Annual Report:

there is more to it than meets the eye

EDITORIAL

Many people would think of an annual report as being an organisation’s account

of its activities throughout the preceding year, including key information on the

organisation’s inancial performance. The annual reports published by the European

Commission and the European Investment Bank are good examples of this. Through

their annual reports, many organisations hold themselves accountable to the outside

world. The same goes for most organisations in the private sector, and many countries

require companies, particularly the larger ones, to prepare and release such an annual

report. Once published, the report might attract some media interest, and prompt

some shareholders’ reactions, which may translate into changes in share prices on the

stock market. More often than not, though, ‘business as usual’ soon resumes.

For several supreme audit institutions (SAIs), the situation is diferent: their annual

report is often one of – if not the – core output of their organisations’ audit activities.

In this sense, it is not an account of their activities but the result of their activities. And

used to hold others to account. This also applies to the ECA’s Annual Report. It is the

result of an enormous annual efort to provide, in accountancy terms, a ‘true and fair’

view of the inancial management of EU funds. Furthermore, since the ECA’s mandate

for the Statement of Assurance – the audit opinion we issue – is not limited to the

reliability of accounts but also considers transactions’ compliance with legislation, our

Annual Report difers from that of most other SAIs. Hence, there is a lot more to it than

an initial reading of the 300-page 2016 Annual Report would suggest.

We have made the 2016 Annual Report the central theme of this edition of the ECA

Journal, to give you a look behind the scenes at the making of this report. Without

doing a disservice to the over 30 special reports and many other publications the ECA

produces annually, I think it is fair to say that the production of the Annual Report has

quite an impact on planning, work pace and even the organisational structure of the

ECA. We zoom in on this, irstly with an interview with the ECA Member responsible

for the Annual Report, Lazaros Lazarou, (see page 5) before turning the spotlight on

several colleagues in the ‘frontline’ chambers which actually do the audit work on

the ground (see page 14). And Europe would not be Europe were it not for another

consideration: multilingualism. Here, too, there is more to the process than meets the

eye: besides the Annual Report being available in 23 languages (see page 24), many

auditees will communicate in their own language during the audit process itself,

leading to a considerable amount of background translation work that is not visible to

an outsider.

Unlike in the private sphere, in the EU context the ECA Annual Report is the stepping

stone for the annual discharge procedure. As the 2016 EP discharge rapporteur

Joachim Zeller underlines (see page 27), the ECA Annual Report forms the main basis

for his discharge resolution and the ECA’s indings provide the core material for the

Commissioner hearings. Sometimes our Annual Report also leads to questions from

Member State parliamentarians (see pages 37 and 43).

A large number of the ECA’s recommendations ind their way into the discharge

resolution. That is why in this edition we try to give you an insight into the full cycle,

looking not only at how the Annual Report comes about but also what is done with it.

Both the European Parliament and Council work with it, addressing various questions

mostly to the Commission, culminating in the EP’s discharge resolution in April with

many observations and remarks submitted to EU institutions. These institutions then

follow up with responses, often delivered before the summer recess, and so just in

time before the discharge process starts all over again… with the publication of the

ECA’s next Annual Report.

Gaston Moonen

EUU, Alm.del - 2017-18 - Bilag 233: Rapport fra den Europæiske Revisionsret december 2017

The ECA Annual Report:

striving to make it more

interesting year on year

Interview of Lazaros S. Lazarou, ECA Member

By Gaston Moonen, Directorate of the Presidency

Annual Report with a historical dimension

On the day of the interview with Lazaros Lazarou, it was exactly two months

ago that the ECA had published the 2016 Annual Report. So the whole 2016

exercise may already feel like a long time ago, even for Lazaros Lazarou, as

the formally called Member for the Annual Report. With a smile, he explains

that he does not sufer from such amnesia. He points out that the European

Parliament’s hearings of the Commission for the diferent policy headings

have started and are ongoing. On top of that he says: ‘The 2016 Annual

Report is a historical report since it was quite a change from previous ARs.

For the irst time we gave a qualiied opinion regarding compliance on

the expenditure side. This drew a lot of attention when presented to the

Budgetary Control Committee (CONT) at the end of September. We had an

interesting discussion at that meeting, with challenging questions for the ECA.

But it gave us the opportunity to deepen the discussion and explain how we

arrived at the qualiied opinion.’ And this was not without efects according to

Lazaros Lazarou: ‘About a week later during the presentation at the plenary in

Strasbourg, even MEPs that had initially been sceptical, including for example

MEP Sarvamaa who had had some inquisitive questions before, all welcomed

the 2016 Annual Report, our qualiied opinion and the decisions we had taken

to arrive at it. Overall they were very supportive of the ECA’s work.’

When asked what would be his ‘must read’ recommendation for the 310 page

2016 Annual Report Lazaros Lazarou is quick to respond. ‘A ‘must read’ is the

Statement of Assurance itself and, in the ‘Audit in Brief’ - which summarises

our 310 page Annual Report in 46 pages - I think the ‘Overall results’ pages are

a ‘must read’. Also thanks to the visuals it enables the reader to obtain a quick

overview of the inancial management of the EU. Anybody interested in a

speciic area would do best to read the chapter that is relevant; for example if

you work in research then Chapter 5 would be a ‘must read’.’

When requested to identify three strong points of the 2016 Annual Report

he has to relect a bit longer: ‘We are trying to make the report more

interesting by providing representative and illustrative examples, using more

To know more about the

internal and external

dimensions of the Annual

Report who better to

interview than – looking also

at the oicial description of

his responsibilities – Mister

Annual Report himself.

Lazaros Lazarou looks back at

what he inds already to be an

‘historical’ 2016 exercise and

looks forward what there is -

or might be - to come.

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The ECA Annual Report: striving to make it more interesting year on year

continued

infographics, and paying particular attention to the use of plain language. These

are strong points. As is the clear structure of the report, which helps the EP and the

Council to use it during the discharge procedure. But there are also some other

strong points which one might not immediately think of. For example, the fact that

our audits are always conducted according to international audit standards, namely

the INTOSAI and ISA standards. Another strength is the performance of our staf,

working very professionally and taking full account of all information provided by our

auditees, even if it sometimes comes very late in the process.’

Knowing the tricks of the trade

Lazaros Lazarou is clearly at ease with his role, which he has now been doing for four

years: ‘I knew when I was asked to become Member for the Annual Report that it

would be a demanding portfolio. And it has indeed been demanding. But I also enjoy

it. Financial and compliance audit are my ield of professional expertise, and were

also very much so before I joined the ECA.’ But he also considers the results of his

work to be rewarding and is pleased to see that the improvements made are noted:

‘It is widely acknowledged by our stakeholders that we have got better over the years

at presenting our audit indings. This is an achievement of the ECA and of our staf: all

Members and many staf members have contributed towards it; the Annual Report is

truly the result of team work and is an ECA wide achievement.’

When speaking about the speciic responsibilities of the Member for the Annual

Report he refers to the mandate given by the ECA’s College: ‘I am primarily

responsible for ensuring that the underlying work for the Statement of Assurance

is consistent with and adheres to the ECA’s methodology. Chamber V Financing

and Administering the Union, is also the coordinating chamber where all the audit

proposals for all the work on the diferent Annual Report chapters are discussed.

In this chamber we analyse any issues that are relevant to our methodology and to

the SoA audit work.’ Lazaros Lazarou zooms in on two important moments in the

making of the Annual Report: ‘For the audit proposals on each policy area we provide

guidance, based on strategic decisions by the College, on how Chambers should

conduct their audit work for the Annual Report. Later on, each year, we issue, under

my responsibility, the Annual Report instructions, focusing on the key elements that

need to be reported in each Chapter. As the Member for the Annual Report, I also

monitor the progress made in the auditing and reporting.’ However, he underlines

again the extent to which the Annual Report is a joint product of the Court as a

whole: ‘Producing the Annual Report ultimately involves all Members: it is adopted by

the College, making all Members jointly and individually responsible. In my chamber

all Members have a chapter to prepare, and in the other four audit chambers each

Member is responsible for at least one chapter.’

Lazaros Lazarou also supports the ECA President

when presenting the Annual Report at the

European Parliament, both at committee level and

in the plenary, and before the Council’s ECOFIN.

He adds: ‘I exchange views with the European

Parliament’s Budgetary Control Committee and

with the Commission on issues of common

interest, including the way forward on gathering

audit evidence for the Statement of Assurance

work itself. With the ECA College having endorsed

proposals to make more use of work by others

where possible, it is now up to the Member for

the Annual Report, Chamber V, its directorate, and also other chamber directorates,

to implement the strategic decisions that have been taken. This means close

cooperation with the Commission’s services, including their Internal Audit Service,

so that they can take the necessary steps for us to apply this modiied approach.

From left to right: Ingeborg

Grässle, Chair of the Committee on

Budgetary Control, MEP;

Klaus-Heiner Lehne, ECA President;

Lazaros S. Lazarou, ECA Member

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The ECA Annual Report: striving to make it more interesting year on year

continued

In particular, this requires maximum alignment of their compliance work with ours, so

that we – as the external auditor - can make more use of the compliance information

produced by the Commission. Moving towards more methodological consistency is an

important factor for successful implementation of the modiied approach envisaged by

the 2018-2020 ECA Strategy.’

Serving as guardian of consistency

Methodological consistency is another important aspect at the ECA. So how does

the ECA ensure in practice that inconsistencies in audit work are kept to a minimum

and appear only where justiied? Lazaros Lazarou responds vividly: ‘We have a large

number of checks and balances in place to ensure consistency. All indings for

Statement of Assurance work have to be agreed by my chamber directorate. In case of

a disagreement between auditors, the issue goes to the next hierarchical level, etc. If

disagreement persists between directors then it will arrive on my desk and I will discuss

it with the reporting Member for the chapter concerned. Ultimately such cases will be

discussed by the College. Through this process consistency is achieved.’ He laughs at my

comment that he acts as the ‘guardian of consistency.’

An annual

routine

translated into discharge questions

Although it gives a qualiied audit opinion for the irst time, for many people the

2016 Annual Report will look very similar to previous reports. Does Lazaros Lazarou

fear that the Annual Report and the subsequent discharge decision are becoming a

mere annual routine? He clearly has strong views on this: ‘It is inevitable that there will

be some repetition year after year; you might be surprised, but this is even wanted.

Comparability between years, analysing and presenting possible trends, is a key wish

of our stakeholders, I particularly, when there are changes to our Annual Report. We,

as any other external auditor, have a responsibility to deliver ex post opinions on the

reliability of accounts – a repetitive outcome year in year out – and, in our case, also on

legality and regularity. This is the nature of our work.’ In his opinion there is only limited

scope to make the Annual Report a lot more interesting and varied: ‘Our subject is what

it is.’

‘We have to keep things in perspective, Lazaros Lazarou stresses. ‘Our Annual Report

with its Statement of Assurance is, in substance, not much diferent from the opinions

issued by other statutory auditors, either private or public. We are required by the

Treaty to give an opinion on the reliability of the accounts, and in addition an opinion

on the legality and regularity of the underlying transactions. But even if we did not

have a Treaty mandate to issue such opinions that would have been our responsibility

as the external auditors of the EU anyway. The ECA made the right choice in having

this Statement of Assurance in the Annual Report because this gives it high visibility.’

In his view one should not underestimate the inluence the Annual Report has on

the discharge work of the European Parliament and the Council: ‘Our Annual Report

structure is the basis for their discussions. Many of our observations appear in the

discharge documents of these two institutions.’

Adding value by reporting beyond compliance issues

What sets our Annual Report apart from many other reports produced by private or

public auditors is, according to the Member for the Annual Report, all the additional

information provided on compliance issues: ‘We give an insight into the diferent MFF

headings, with detailed facts and igures on compliance, which makes the Annual

Report a lot bulkier than other reports, but with a lot more information. If it were not for

the compliance element, we would mainly have the Statement of Assurance itself, with

at the most some brief clariications.’

EUU, Alm.del - 2017-18 - Bilag 233: Rapport fra den Europæiske Revisionsret december 2017

The ECA Annual Report: striving to make it more interesting year on year

continued

As last year, the Annual Report was published in late September, two months

earlier than required by the Financial Regulation. Lazaros Lazarou explains that

the audit opinion and the Annual Report itself are adopted by the ECA College

just days after the Commission adopts its inal annual accounts: ‘The sooner

the Commission publishes a single accountability report – including both inal

accounts and compliance information we can build on – the sooner we can adopt

the Statement of Assurance and the Annual Report.’

When asked what diference the Annual Report makes to EU citizens the Member

for the Annual Report does not think that citizens take, or even should take, a

speciic interest in the technical work of the ECA. ‘But EU citizens can feel assured

that there is a watchdog out there which keeps an eye on their inancial interests.

Knowing that somebody does such a job helps boost their trust, their conidence

that our work helps to improve the functioning of the EU.’ According to Lazaros

Lazarou, the recommendations made by the ECA in the Annual Report contribute

to such improvements: ‘Thanks to our recommendations and our monitoring of

their implementation, and thanks to the pressure the legislative authorities put on

the Commission to improve things and implement ECA’s recommendations, they

certainly have an impact.’

Speaking of impact, there seem to be increasing calls from the EP for more

information in the Annual Report on the impact and results of EU policies. Lazaros

Lazarou indicates that the way in which performance issues are covered in our

Annual Report is currently under consideration by the ECA Members: ‘The College

has recently asked my chamber and the ECA Member responsible for the Annual

Report’s performance chapter to consider how to further develop our reporting

on performance. In my view reporting on performance should not be conined

to special reports. Therefore we need to ind ways to report on performance in

the Annual Report too.’ However, he is not in favour of devising a measurement

on performance to give an annual performance opinion per policy area: ‘Devising

our own performance measurement rate would not be such a good idea. If the

Commission does its part, we could move towards attesting of their performance

assessment, like we aim to move towards an attestation engagement for

compliance. Ideally, the Commission, as the manager of EU funds, should measure

the performance of its policies and programmes based on indicators.’ For Lazaros

Lazarou the Annual Report is already ‘evolving into a combination of reporting on

inancial, compliance and performance audit work’ and in his view auditing the

Commission’s performance assessments would it into this well.

ECA messages going beyond the discharge exercise

To Lazaros Lazarou’s mind, the relevance of the Annual Report is certainly not

limited to the discharge process. ‘Just as an example: Chapter 2 on budgetary

management in this year’s Annual Report discusses an important issue for the next

multiannual inancial framework – we show that the total amount of payments

the EU committed itself to make for future budgets is higher than ever, at almost

239 billion euro: more than twice the EU annual budget. This restricts their ability

to ill in the next multiannual inancial framework; it actually ties our hands for the

future.’

He has high hopes for the further development of the Annual Report: ‘The Annual

Report is here to stay, but it will certainly need to evolve. It should become even

more visual and focus even more on performance; but it should always keep the

Statement of Assurance on reliability and on legality and regularity at its core. As

regards tor the latter, it is up to us how we gather our audit evidence in the most

appropriate way. And provided that the required conditions are met, we are keen

to make more use of the work of others.'

EUU, Alm.del - 2017-18 - Bilag 233: Rapport fra den Europæiske Revisionsret december 2017

The ECA Annual Report 2016 in numbers

By Kathrin Bornemeier and Gaston Moonen, Directorate of the Presidency

Number crunching is something often ailiated with

accountancy and audit. And the ECA’s Annual Report is

voluminous enough to suspect that it contains many numbers

and other data. Kathrin Bornemeier and Gaston Moonen take a

closer look and share some of their (visual) insights.

Numbers telling a story?

The ECA 2016 Annual Report is an impressive 300-page document.

Taking a macro-view we try to show some main numerical features

of the Annual Report(s), by analysing raw data such as number of

pages, publication dates, number of graphs, number of Member

States and third countries mentioned. Our audit indings lead to

many recommendations for improvement, which can be related to

compliance and performance issues. Making recommendations is

one thing, more interesting is what is done with them. Therefore

we also zoomed in on the numbers for implementation of ECA

recommendations over the last three years.

Dates and data visualisation: earlier and with more graphs on

same number of pages

Interestingly, the number of pages of the Annual Report has remained

steadily around 313 over the last three years (2014: 315 pages, 2015: 314

pages, 2016: 310 pages). The publication date, however, has moved up

signiicantly in the past three years (see

Figure 1):

the Annual Report

concerning the inancial year 2014 was published on 10 November

2014, with the following one published on 13 October 2016. Our last

Annual Report concerning the inancial year 2016 was published even

earlier, namely on 28 September 2017: almost two months earlier than

what is prescribed by the Financial Regulation.

Figure 1: Publication dates of ECA Annual Reports concerning the inancial years 2014 to 2016.

1 We thank our colleagues Emanuele Fossati, Jesus Nieto Munoz and Zsolt Varga for

their valuable advice and assistance.

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The ECA Annual Report 2016 in numbers

continued

A total of 33 tables and 59

graphs and pictures illustrate the

Report’s messages. In the past two

years, the number of tables was

roughly similar. However, there is

a trend towards increasing data

visualisation, i.e. an increase in

the use of graphics in the annual

reports (see

Figure 2).

While in

the Annual Report 2014 only 29

graphics were used, this number

rose to 38 in the following year

and even further to 59 in the latest

Annual Report.

Which words stand out in the 2016 Annual

Report?

This word cloud displays what words were used most

frequently in our 2016 Annual Report (see

Figure 3).

It especially highlights the words ’commission’ and

‘error’, which were used most frequently, followed by

‘inancial’ and ‘audit’.

Figure 4

also highlights the words used most

frequently, but divided according to the individual

chapters of the AR. It is no coincidence that reading

this word cloud reveals the main topics covered in

each chapter.

Figure 3: Word cloud of most frequently used words in

Annual Report 2016.

Figure 4: Word cloud of most frequently used words in

Annual Report 2016 by Chapter.

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The ECA Annual Report 2016 in numbers

continued

Downward trend

One of the items mostly discussed

by others and covered by media is

the ECA’s estimated level of error

for the expenditure side of the EU

budget. Therefore the ECA chose to

show the tendency of the estimated

level of error in the Annual Reports

of recent years (see

Figure 5).

Over the past three years, this

estimated level of error has declined

signiicantly, namely from 4.4% in

our Annual Report concerning the

inancial year 2014, to 3.8% the

following year, and down to 3.1% in

the latest Annual Report.

Figure 5: Estimated level of error for the EU budget as a whole (2014 to 2016).

Figure 6: Number of mentions of EU member states in the

Annual Report 2016.

Many countries beyond Member

States mentioned in the Annual

Report

The Annual Report provides a lot

of information on audit indings,

including examples of cases found

to illustrate the audit observations

and make it concrete. This often

includes details on where the case

was found and who was responsible.

However, the cases presented

do not provide a representative

picture of where most errors were

found. All Member States were

mentioned in examples and tables

in the Annual Report, albeit with

varying frequency. In total 280 times

a Member State was mentioned.

Greece was mentioned most often,

followed by Spain, France, Ireland,

and Germany. Cyprus and Slovenia

appear three times each

(see

Figure 6).

EUU, Alm.del - 2017-18 - Bilag 233: Rapport fra den Europæiske Revisionsret december 2017

The ECA Annual Report 2016 in numbers

continued

Figure 7: Third countries frequently mentioned in the Annual Report 2016.

Through funds coming from the general EU budget and the European Development

Fund, the EU belongs to the biggest donors for development aid in the world. This

might explain why in the 2016 Annual Report 40 third countries were mentioned

once or more (see

Figure 7).

Australia (7 times) and Turkey (6 times) were mentioned

most frequently, followed by the Democratic Republic of Congo, Egypt, Niger and

the United States, which were each mentioned ive times.

More and more recommendations accepted and implemented in the ARs 2014

to 2016

The number of recommendations made in the Annual Report concerning the

inancial year 2016 was 30, and therefore lower than in the previous two years.

However, the share of accepted recommendations increased, from 72% in the

Annual Report concerning the inancial year 2014, to 83% in 2015, and inally to 90%

in 2016 (see

Figure 8).

Figure 8: Recommendations accepted as a percentage of recommendations made in

Annual Reports 2014-2016.

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The ECA Annual Report 2016 in numbers

continued

Among recommendations from previous years that received an audit follow up

on their implementation, the share of those implemented fully or in most respects

also increased signiicantly – from 64% in the Annual Report 2014, to 71% in 2015

and 79% in the latest Annual Report (see

Figure 9).

Here a distinction can made

regarding recommendations addressing compliance issues and those addressing

performance – in all three years none of the recommendations concerning

performance (Chapter 3 of the Annual Report) that underwent a follow-up audit

were implemented fully or in most respects.

Figure 9: Recommendations of previous years implemented fully or in most respects,

for Annual Reports 2014-2016.

To summarize: added value in looking at sheer data

The limited text and data mining we have done helps us already to identify possible

hidden patterns and possible correlations. The data over the three last year indicate that

more and more recommendations made in the Annual Reports have been accepted by

the Commission. In addition, and perhaps even more important, an increasing share

of the recommendations made in the Annual Reports over the past three years has

been implemented fully or in most respects. At the same time, the ECA’s estimated

level of error has decreased from 4.4% in 2014 to 3.1% in 2016. Coincidence or a causal

relationship?

EUU, Alm.del - 2017-18 - Bilag 233: Rapport fra den Europæiske Revisionsret december 2017

The making of… a look behind the scenes of

the Annual Report

By Gaston Moonen, Directorate of the Presidency

The Annual Report 2016 presents conclusions, observations, data and examples

of what ECA auditors found in relations to EU funds. To get a better idea about the

efort going in to this annual exercise I spoke with principal managers Juan Ignacio

Gonzalez Bastero, Ralph Otte, Michael Zenner and task leaders Joël Costantzer and

Jarek Smigiel about all the work that is behind the Annual Report. It explains why

this report is not written overnight.

Planning, missions and transaction testing

For auditors numbers can tell a story. Perhaps for readers of the Journal

too. So to start with a few numbers: the ECA Annual Report 2016 has in

total 316 pages. Almost half of all the ECA auditors at some time – full

time or for some time - work on it during the year. Let us for example

zoom in on the audit work done in cohesion by Chamber II Investment

for cohesion, growth and inclusion. Their audit indings are presented

in Chapter 6 ‘Economic, social and territorial cohesion,’ which counts 39

pages, including graphs, tables, etc. In an expenditure area with almost

36 billion euro Juan Ignacio worked with a team of around 30 people

– and in peak times even more – to audit inancial management and

control systems and an audit sample of almost 200 transactions related

to payments done in 2016. This year they have found a total of 87 cases

where EU or national rules had not been complied with, of which 25

were considered to have had a inancial impact (i.e. ‘quantiied’ errors).

Overall his team has issued around 140 audit observations.

For Juan Ignacio and his team this work started already well before

inancial year 2016 was inished. Juan Ignacio explains: ‘Our audit year

normally starts with the preparation of the audit proposal, based on

the guidelines provided by Chamber V Financing and Administering

the Union. This started in December 2015, then we did some further

ine tuning based on the guidance from Chamber V. And then the

adoption of the audit proposal for 2016 in April 2016. By then only a

few people are involved. This changes substantially when the audit

work is launched in May to prepare for the irst audit missions in the

Member States, which took place in June.’ As to the number of audit

missions Juan Ignacio points out that most of the 200 transactions will

require a mission on the spot. His team alone has carried out a total of

54 such visits all over Europe for the 2016 Annual Report. ‘We visited 14

of the 28 Member States. Some Member States are not covered every

year simply because of low expenditure rates.’

Michael, who with his team of about 25 auditors was responsible

for the assessment presented in 35 pages in chapter 7 regarding

agricultural expenditure for the European Agricultural Guarantee Fund

(EAGL), has similar igures: ‘For an expenditure level of almost 45 billion

euro - which accounts for 77% of the 2016 expenditure in Natural

resources presented in chapter 7 of the Annual Report – we examined

217 transactions. For this we carried out around 60 audit missions in

21 Member States, generally one week per mission. Usually an audit

team consists of two auditors and in one week we audit three to four

diferent beneiciaries. In addition we carried out around 10 one or two

day visits at the Commission’s DG for Agriculture in Brussels.’ Starting

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The making of… a look behind the scenes of the Annual Report

continued

dates for audit proposals and the start of the audit work itself is for his ield

similar to what happens in auditing the cohesion expenditure.

Besides compliance work which underlies the Statement of Assurance on

payments and revenue, the ECA also gives an opinion on the reliability of

accounts. The team of Ralph and Jarek consists of about 10 auditors, plus

at times support from the line chambers with audit expertise on policy

areas like agriculture, cohesion, etc., entailing 4 to 6 additional auditors

working on reliability issues for two to three months per year. Also the

work on the reliability of accounts involves transaction testing. This work

starts long before the accounts are closed. There are annually around 10

million transactions in the Commission accounts, of which the EU revenue

transactions form only a very small part; almost all transactions relate to

expenditure. Particular risk areas here are invoices and pre-inancing. Audit

visits are exclusively to Brussels, not to Member States. All the work for the

Annual Report 2016 included about 120 missions to Brussels, mostly not

more than two days per mission. As to the planning Jarek explains: ‘Our

audit is also a continuous process, several audit observations on reliability

issues in our 2016 Annual Report, in chapter 1, will form the basis for our

audit proposal for work to be done on inancial year 2017, which we started

a few months ago.’

Joël is the task leader for the chapter 3 of the Annual Report, called ‘Getting

results from the EU budget,’ and which contains three parts covering

more than 60 pages: a major subject – this year, a comparison of the

Commission’s approach on performance reporting with good practices;

some common challenges identiied in recent ECA special reports; and

implementation levels of recommendations from ECA special reports. Joel

explains: ‘With a small team of three auditors we started our work for the

irst two parts of this chapter in September 2016. The work on the follow-up

of recommendations, with contributions by teams from all the chambers,

started in the spring. Our audit work for the major subject and the part on

special reports is every year quite diferent, ranging in 2016 from survey

results to reviewing our own reports to identify common threads. We only

had a limited number of audit visits to Commission DGs and international

organisations to gather comparative information.’

Audit work itself

So far the numbers. But what about the work itself? This can be rather

diferent per policy area audited. For agricultural expenditure Michael

explains that paying agencies in Member States are visited where inancial

administration systems for payments to farmers are examined, or systems

for land parcel registration are reviewed, often by running sampled

transactions through them. ‘This often includes on-the-spot visits to the

farm receiving EU aid, verifying there the administrative proof of meeting

the eligibility requirements, ranging from land eligibility to measuring ields,

usually using geo-satellite equipment to do so.’

As to the reliability of accounts work Ralph explains: ‘Our work can difer

considerably per type of transaction. Checking a pre-inancing payment of

an operational programme of the DG for Regional Policy requires not only

to know which pre-inancing was in the pipeline but also what the status is

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The making of… a look behind the scenes of the Annual Report

continued

of the project implementation. This to enable us to calculate the estimated

amount of expenses not yet reported. Quite diferent from, for example,

checking a salary payment in an EU institution.’

Juan Ignacio explains that in the cohesion area, like in most others, the

diferent steps of the audit are set out in an audit programme: this goes

from looking into the operational programme documents and also

comprises to check how the EU-funded projects had been selected. Most

of these steps require veriication of extensive documentation. A lot of

back and forth communication is already taking place before the Member

State, relevant authorities and inal beneiciary is visited. Upon return

audit observations are drafted and often this requires a lot of analysis and

review. Juan Ignacio adds: ‘In our audit area the eligibility rules are mostly

set at national level, relatively few rules at are actually speciied at EU level:

for example VAT rules, rules on co-inancing costs or deadlines. But most

complex are the rules on public procurement and state aid, which help to

ensure that the EU internal market can function well. Often an auditor will

not ind a black/white situation but needs to apply judgement, also since

the eligibility rules are not always that clear. An advice from our ECA’s Legal

Service might then be needed, or we need to ask for more information

from authorities in the Member State visited.’

For the performance work Joël highlights that for the 2016 performance

chapter benchmarking exercise, he and his team consulted relevant

international standards and carried out a survey on performance reporting

by EU Member States, other countries and international organisations.

He adds: ‘We also reviewed publicly available performance information

for a selection of 14 governments and international organisations and

examined assessment reports issued by donor-country organisations.’

Heavy review process but intended

Once an audit observation is drafted by the auditor then the internal

review process kicks in. Perhaps cumbersome but also necessary,

according Juan Ignacio: ‘As ECA our reputation, our credibility is dependent

on the quality of our work, the robustness of our indings. So once the

observation is drafted it will be discussed in a review meeting, with the

auditor, the team leader, the irst level validator, the principal manager,

and representatives of the private oice of the reporting Member and of

Chamber V as coordinating chamber. In our work consistency of treatment

of errors is very important and that there is solid information on which

the observation is build.’ He further explains that legal basis, treatment

of similar cases in the past by the Commission, etc. is very important to

ensure consistency: ‘Most initial indings will hold but some observations

will need to be modiied (or even withdrawn), for example because of

additional information received from the Member State or the legal

interpretation to take account of evolving case law by the European Court

of Justice or rulings by national courts.’

Michael also describes a heavy but functional review process to ensure

that the ECA will hold ground when challenged by others, foremost the

auditee. Ralph explains that in his team a irst review will take place by

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The making of… a look behind the scenes of the Annual Report

continued

the head of task and by him as principal manager. ‘As a next step the

audit observation will go the directorate and the private oice of the

reporting Member, in this case the Member for the Annual Report.

Then, also taking into account materiality, it will become part of an

audit observation letter.’

Clearance process to verify the facts

Verifying with the auditee that you have assessed the case on the basis

of complete, valid and up to date information is a crucial element in

the ECA’s audit process. This so-called clearance starts with sending

out audit observations or clearance letters to the organisation subject

to the audit, like in the research ield, or the Member State authority

in charge of the transaction. Michael gives some details: ‘For EAGF we

do not send individual clearance letters for each transaction audited.

We send a irst batch of clearance letters before Christmas covering all

missions carried out until the end of October. And a second batch in

February/March. For our audits for the 2016 Statement of Assurance

we have sent more than 40 clearance letters covering in total 217

transactions.’

For the cohesion area Juan Ignacio explains that one clearance letter

per operational programme is sent. ‘So for 2016 we sent 54 letters to

the Member State’s managing authority, the national audit institution

and the Commission. Internally draft observations are discussed in

English, but when sent out to national authorities all clearing letters

need to be translated. Then Member States have the possibility to

reply, but often they do not reply within the deadline of 6 weeks. When

we get the replies-,- sometimes each having over 100 pages and

mostly drafted in the oicial language of the Member State, we need

support of translators to get things clear in a very short period of time.

This because of the very tight deadlines for producing the chapter

on cohesion. In practice we have to start drafting the general parts

of the chapter before having received all the replies.’ He also explains

that some replies necessitate to organise a so-called trilateral meeting

between the ECA audit team and representatives of the Commission

and the Member State authorities. He continues: ‘This normally takes

place in June. For 2016 we had 8 trilateral meetings with 6 Member

States. But such meetings only take place for the most complex and

contentious cases. Besides that we might have meetings with DG

Competition to clarify state aid issues, often leading to useful insights.’

For Ralph and Jarek the situation is slightly diferent: all the 13

accounting observation letters, as they call them, went to the

Commission. For chapter 3 Joël recalls that draft chapter texts are

cleared with the Commission, mainly the Secretariat General and DG

Budget, at various stages of progress of the task.

Report drafting

The drafting of the chapters often takes place soon after the so-

called Annual Report instructions – horizontal guidelines on how to

structure the report - are presented, which was in early 2017 for the

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The making of… a look behind the scenes of the Annual Report

continued

2016 Annual Report. Often by March there is a clear idea on what to

report in the chapter. Michael says: ‘We decide on the order of indings

and the structure of the chapter and I prepare a irst draft. All auditors

dealing with a speciic country are regularly consulted on the draft as

it evolves and invited to check whether the text correctly relects the

audit indings. They also provide a correspondence table which allows

linking every mention of a Member State to the relevant observation in

the clearing letter.’ Juan Ignacio stresses that high quality requirements

need to be met within short deadlines: ‘Every chapter needs to pass an

internal approval procedure, then the line Chamber, then Chamber V as

coordinating chamber.’

Finally there are the so-called adversarial meetings with the

Commission, mostly organised per DG or a few DGs in charge of a

speciic policy area. For the reliability of accounts part Jarek explains

that the procedure is rather straightforward: ‘ We had a video meeting

of half an hour, mostly serving as a mutual recognition of the correct

understanding of what the ECA has written, what the Commission has

replied, and what points we have to focus on for the future audits.’ For

Michael these meetings meant something diferent: ‘At the adversarial

stage we usually have cleared the facts with DG for Agriculture and

the Member States. Our discussions then mostly are around the legal

assessment of the facts and the question as to how to assess the

observations, and whether or not there is a inancial impact. It is not

rare that discussions get stuck and positions cannot be reconciled. But

sometimes the Commission is following up on an ECA observation and

imposing inancial corrections based on our observations which before

were strongly contested during the adversarial meeting. This is for us as

auditors a welcome acknowledgement of our work.’

Joël highlights that the adversarial procedure for chapter 3 got a lot

of attention this year on the Commission side. ‘This underlines for us

the importance the Commission attaches to this chapter and how

we assess the performance of the EU budget. It often is also a well-

attended meeting because we cover many DGs in our chapter.’

Discharge discussions

Being deeply involved in the audit and reporting on a speciic policy

area most of the colleagues indicate to be involved in the discharge

discussions with the Council’s Budget Committee, together with

their director. Assistance is also provided for discussions in the

European Parliament. Michael says: ‘We usually hold a meeting with

the discharge rapporteur, this year Joachim Zeller, and provide him

with complementary information.’ Joël explains: ‘I participate in the

discharge meetings, both in the Council Budget Committee and assist

the rapporteur, ECA Member Jan Gregor, at the Parliament’s Budgetary

Control Committee meeting.’

Strong points

The latter issue is very much appreciated to conclude the circle,

for example by Michael: ‘I have regularly attended presentations in

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The making of… a look behind the scenes of the Annual Report

continued

Parliament and Council and saw that our stakeholders are very

interested in and grateful for the information provided.’ For Joël

a highlight in the 2016 audit exercise was that a good result was

achieved with limited resources: ‘Very pleasant was the good

cooperation of all involved in the chapter, including the cooperation

with the ECA language service. Another highlight I found the

willingness of governments and international organisations around

the world to share their experiences.’

Strikingly Ralph and Juan Ignacio raise similar points here: the strong

methodology on which the ECA can base its work, which is also good

for comparability, not only in time but also with other organisations.

As Ralph put it: ‘For the reliability of accounts part such an opinion is

required everywhere, public sector or private sector alike, provided

that accruals accounting is used.’ And Juan Ignacio underlines the

good cooperation between the services in the house, including for

translation issues. The two also agree on an issue that needs attention

in the future: the strict deadlines. Ralph: ‘The EU Financial Regulation

sets very strict deadlines for the accounts and these deadlines are

too late for the ECA. The accounts are received too late from the

Commission which forces us to complete the audit in a limited period

of time.’ For Juan Ignacio further stretching the deadlines would be ‘at

the detriment of the quality of our work.’

Throughout the interviews a pride was present to work, together

with their respective teams, for what was called the ‘Premium

product of the ECA.’ Juan Ignacio said: ‘From a distance, for the

European citizen, it might not be an easy document to read. But it is

a kind of warranty that somebody is looking at public money, their

money. We should not expect that citizens read all our reports. Even

for those colleagues who are directly working for the Annual Report:

does anyone from their family read the report? Probably not. This

does, however, not make it less important for the EU accountability

process.’ Striking is the remark coming from a specialist like Ralph:

‘Our audit opinion does not read well, it is not common language.

If the accounts are right why can’t we say: Everything is ine. But

unfortunately the international accounting rules – the IFAC and IPSAS

standards – do not allow that. Therefore we are stuck with this jargon.

But fortunately specialists know what we mean.

EUU, Alm.del - 2017-18 - Bilag 233: Rapport fra den Europæiske Revisionsret december 2017

Coordination and quality review for

the Annual Report – truly team work

By Arjen Lok, Private Oice of Lazaros Lazarou, ECA Member, and Nikolaos Kilonis,

Directorate

Financing and administering the Union

Many elements to complete the cycle

The cycle of the ECA’s Annual Report starts with the planning process,

followed by the audit work and reporting of our indings (see

Figure 1).

The ECA’s Annual Report is then adopted by the College of Members

and published.

The report is the basis for the discharge process leading to a discharge

report and resolution by the European Parliament that together with

the lessons learned and follow-up activities is input for the next annual

report(s).

The audit execution and drafting

of the diferent chapters creating

the ECA’s Annual Report is quite

an efort in which all Members

of the ECA and many staf from

across the Court are involved.

Arjen Lok and Nikolaos Kilonis,

who are closely involved in the

coordination and review process

to ensure that the diferent

elements become a consistent

and coherent annual report, brief

us on what it takes to get there.

Figure 1 – ECA’s annual report cycle

Source: authors

EUU, Alm.del - 2017-18 - Bilag 233: Rapport fra den Europæiske Revisionsret december 2017

Coordination and quality review for the Annual Report – truly team work

continued

The Annual Report work is carried out by auditors in all ECA Chambers. The

work needs to be of good quality and presented in a consistent and coherent

way. For this the ECA created a coordination responsibility embedded in

Audit Chamber V

Financing and administering the Union

and appointed the

Member for the Annual Report to be responsible for ensuring the consistency

and adherence to the ECA’s methodology of the underlying audit work for

the Statement of Assurance (SoA). The SoA review team, which is part of this

Chamber, supports the Member for the Annual Report in his tasks. The team is

involved in all elements of the cycle by for example providing guidance for the

audit planning (green elements of the cycle), reviewing the assessments made

(in the blue parts of the cycle) and contributing to the reporting phase (in the

red parts of the cycle).

The ECA’s Audit Quality Control Committee is responsible for development of

audit methodology and as such drafts and issues audit manuals and guidelines,

available via https://www.eca.europa.eu/en/Pages/AuditMethodology.aspx. It

is also responsible for quality assurance; a procedure that takes place ex-post

and it complements rather than substitutes the EQCR within the audit process.

The day-to-day supervision and review is done by the head of tasks, principal

managers and directors of the audit teams. The SoA review team provides the

input for the Engagement Quality Control Review (EQCR) for the Annual Report

(see

Figure 2).

Figure 2 – the ECA’s audit quality management framework

Source: ‘Audit quality management framework’ module of VGAP (updated in September 2017)

EUU, Alm.del - 2017-18 - Bilag 233: Rapport fra den Europæiske Revisionsret december 2017

Coordination and quality review for the Annual Report – truly team work

continued

Team players with diferent roles

The SoA review team and the audit teams are peers in the process, equals

like the reporting Member and Member for the Annual Report, each

having their own roles in the process (see

Figure 3).

Figure 3 – Roles of diferent actors involved in the SoA work

Audit

team

Principal Reporting

Manager Mem ber

SoA review

team & AR

Mem ber

(Cham ber

Director

audit

cham ber

Audit

Cham ber coordination

Cham ber

Audit Planning Mem orandum

Drafting

Supervision and review (within audit chamber)

EQCR review

Adoption

Transaction testing, system s w ork, etc.

Audit work documented in ECA’s electronic

documentation system (ASSYST)

Supervision and review (within audit chamber)

EQCR

Clearing letters sent to auditee based on

documented audit work (ASSYST)

Analysis of replies

EQCR of analysis of replies

Specific Assessm ent

Drafting

Supervision and review (within audit chamber)

EQCR review

Adversarial meeting between ECA and

auditees

Adoption

1) ECA VGAM foresees:''…… The vertical audit chambers are responsible for carrying out an EQCR of draft APMs and

draft audit reports. The EQCR process is not a replacement for supervision and review, but is a different process, with

diffeferent objectives...''

Source: ECA – Audit Chamber V Financing and Administering the Union – document ‘lessons learned from the

(2014- ) 2016 Statement of Assurance exercise – the reviewer’s perspective'

In most cases the auditors and reviewers will ind common ground

quickly. Only in some cases, the quality control review inds that more

relection and discussion is needed and, if this process cannot be

concluded by the hierarchical superiors, the reporting Member and

Member for the Annual Report bring the discussion to the coordinating

Chamber.

Getting the facts and assessments right provides the core basis for

producing a good quality report. Presenting our indings, conclusions,

recommendations and follow-up in a consistent manner requires further

coordination. This starts with the so-called ‘Annual Report instructions,’

drafted by the SoA team, and presented by the Member for the Annual

Lazaros S. Lazarou, ECA Member for the

Report to the coordination

Chamber Financing and administering the

Annual Report

Union

and the College that adopts them. The draft chapters receive

reviewer’s comments to ensure a balanced and consistent presentation of

the observations and the coordinating Chamber discusses the indings,

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Coordination and quality review for the Annual Report – truly team work

continued

conclusions and recommendations presented in each of the chapters

before the inal adoption by the College.

The President and Member for the Annual Report present the Annual

Report to the European Parliament’s Budgetary control committee (CONT)

and the plenary. These presentations start the discharge process. Reporting

Members present the chapters during discussions of the CONT committee

in presence of the Commissioners responsible for these areas. Similarly

the Annual Report is discussed in the Council’s budget committee by ECA

Directors in the presence of Commission representatives.

At the close of the process audit Chambers and the SoA team analyse

the Parliament’s discharge report and the Council’s recommendations.

Together with the experiences gathered this provides relevant input for

improvements to the next annual report(s).

Overall, the Annual Report is a result of team work of the reporting

Members, the Member for the Annual Report and their staf from all Audit

Chambers. Together they deliver the quality ingredients needed for an

auditor’s opinion and report, applying the four eyes principle throughout

the entire process.

EUU, Alm.del - 2017-18 - Bilag 233: Rapport fra den Europæiske Revisionsret december 2017

The Ins and Outs of Translating the

Annual Report

By Derek Meijers, Translation, Language Services and Publication Directorate

From left to right: Nadia Sana, Derek Meijers, Magdalena Madej, Tomas Vrsovsky,

Petra Prochazkova

Every year around the brink of spring

our colleagues from the Translation,

Language Services and Publication

Directorate (TLSPD) anxiously await

the new ECA Annual Report exercise.

Not only is this the most important

publication of the ECA as a whole, it’s

probably also the biggest project on

each translation team’s annual to-do

list. And there is much more to it than

translating alone. Our colleague Derek

Meijers interviewed, Leena Valtari,

Magdalena Madej, Nadia Sana, Petra

Prochazkova and Tomas Vrsovsky, who

give an interesting glimpse behind the

scenes of a bustling directorate.

It can be quite challenging to deliver all translations of the

Annual Report and all Speciic Annual Reports – the reports

the ECA provides on its annual audit of each EU agency - to

the requesters on time. Especially if you consider the fact that

most of the deadlines are scheduled around the summer break,

a period in which many colleagues of the TLSPD enjoy some

well-deserved holidays and most teams operate at less than

full strength. But despite these restraints, in 2017 the TLSPD

managed to plan, prepare, translate, revise, format and upload

almost all documents on time.

Translation process starts at Planning and with the TechPool

The translation process starts with the requesters, who send

numerous documents to our Planning, where they are analysed

and put into production. Then the Technical Pool (TechPool)

takes over, as our colleagues

Leena Valtari

and

Magdalena

Madej

explain:

The Technical Pool has played an important role in the preparation

of documents for translation, and performs a series of technical

checks and changes, the removal of the layout for example, which

are necessary to ensure the translation process runs smoothly and

without hitches (we call this process “sanitization”). The TechPool

checks consistency with the Publication guide’s requirements,

templates, styles and other formatting rules, and also makes sure

that Translation Request Forms are complete, i.e. contain all the

necessary secondary iles and elements in an editable format. The

TechPool never interferes with the content itself.

The most important element for good cooperation with requesters

is that they

always

use

all

those “sanitized” iles. This is particularly

important for oicial documents with multiple versions, and the

annual report. Fortunately, the various actors involved in the

“

This year the TechPool

noticed further signiicant

improvements […] We hope

it will improve even more for

next year’s annual report.

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The Ins and Outs of Translating the Annual Report

continued

lifecycle of oicial documents have recently become more aware of

the crucial role of cooperation. This year the TechPool noticed further

signiicant improvements regarding the reuse of sanitized iles. We hope it

will improve even more for next year’s Annual Report.

23 language teams translating

As soon as the TechPool gives the green light, the 23 language teams

start translating. Since 2017, they all use the same CAT-tool (software

for computer-assisted translation) to translate, revise and store their

translations (SDL Groupshare), which enables them to make optimal

use of the available human resources, to consult previous years’

translations and to deliver consistent translations throughout all the

diferent versions of every individual document. And much faster

than before, as

Petra Prochazkova

from the Czeck language team

illustrates:

The translation of the Annual Report has changed substantially for us

over the past years, shifting from Word-ile based manual translation to

a computer assisted process involving various ile formats and tools in a

shared automated environment and with pooled assistant support. The

most important change this year was the introduction of Groupshare.

In translating the Annual Report, which has multiple chapters, common

terminology as well as a certain degree of standardised content, we could

beneit from several features of this worklow management platform:

more than one translator can work on a project at a time, translation

memory content from Studio (the computer-aided translation tool) can

be quickly retrieved and shared, and the translator and reviser collaborate

within the same shared space.

The biggest challenge for us was to harmonise our team´s worklow with

that of our colleagues from the Linguistic and Administrative Pool (LAS

Pool) – who format our translations, check the layout, hyperlinks, cross-

references etc. and whose tasks need to be completed within the same

deadline as translation, and we need to factor that in when we plan our

own work to provide our output in advance. In the peak season with high

workload and sometimes coinciding deadlines the timing was often tight

and the pressure high for both sides.

Translators use the Collation Forum to ask questions about the content

of a text. This central website is very practical, as everyone involved in the

translation can consult these questions and the replies of the liaison oicer

from the audit Chamber, who is usually the author of the source text.

What we found quite helpful in terms of translation of individual Annual

Report chapters was when more than one liaison oicer could participate

in the Collation forum discussions. That way somebody is available for the

consultation even in the absence of others, which is important especially

in summer when in fact most chapters are being inalised and we needed

to incorporate the responses in good time.

Hopefully with more adjustments towards greater simpliication of some

features and maybe even integration with some of the other tools used

(eg. Collation Forum and Artemis – the ECA’s Translation Management

System, which is linked to the ECA's Data system, where the archives

are

stored),

the new worklow system will be able to facilitate our work in the

future even more.

“

What we found quite

helpful […] was when

more than one liaison

oicer could participate

in the Collation forum

discussions. That way

somebody is available for

the consultation even in

the absence of others.

EUU, Alm.del - 2017-18 - Bilag 233: Rapport fra den Europæiske Revisionsret december 2017

The Ins and Outs of Translating the Annual Report

continued

As mentioned before, the pools and the diferent language teams work

closely together to get the job done. Since the dedicated assistants

of the individual translation units were pooled following ECA’s

internal reform, the linguistic assistants from the LAS Pool now have

to process translations in several diferent languages, not just their

mother tongue. This makes their jobs more interesting, but also more

demanding, as they have to format the documents of several teams on

the same day, also taking into account the diferent linguistic checklists

for each language. Our colleagues

Nadia Sana

and

Tomas Vrsovsky

elaborate:

As soon as the translation teams ‘drop’ their translations through

Groupshare, the assistants from the LAS Pool can begin to post-process

the documents, which is the inal part of the entire translation process.

The post-processing comprises several steps, in which the assistants follow

speciic standard rules that apply to all languages (e.g. for LFN, Logos,

footers…), but also check whether or not the translations are consistent

with the linguistic checklists for each individual language, which deine

speciic linguistic rules which must be followed when formatting. If

necessary, they will ask the translation team to double-check the inal

product before it is uploaded into Artemis and made available to the

requester.

This year, the inal date for translation of the Annual Report chapters

was brought forward and the chapters were longer, but thanks to good

cooperation and good communication with all the actors involved in the

translation process we were able to provide timely, good-quality and well-

formatted translations.

Team efort

Recently, the Court’s translation service faced several changes and

worked hard to get ready for the 2017 Annual Report exercise.

Although some problems had to be solved along the way, the

Directorate managed to implement the reform successfully. As

mentioned before, the most important factor here is team work. A

successful production fully depends on the smooth collaboration and

clear communication between planning, pools and language teams,

but also on the cooperation with the technical troubleshooters from

the Directorate of Information, Workplace and Innovation (DIWI) and

the liaison oicers in the audit chambers who are responsible for the

content of the source texts.

Thanks to the commitment and efort of its staf and management

the TLSPD now enjoys a streamlined organisation, uniied worklow

and practical IT-tools, which enable it to work much faster, more

eicient and also more client oriented. And the combination of all

these improvements resulted in the timely delivery of all 23 language

versions of ECA’s Annual Report to the EU’s citizens. We are looking

forward to next year’s Annual Report!

“

Cooperation and good

communication with all

the actors involved in the

translation process is the

key element.

EUU, Alm.del - 2017-18 - Bilag 233: Rapport fra den Europæiske Revisionsret december 2017

Auditing results to provide guidance for

EU eforts in the future

Interview with Joachim Zeller, MEP and rapporteur for the 2016 Discharge

By Gaston Moonen, Directorate of the Presidency

Who could be better placed to tell us

what they do with our annual report

at the European Parliament than the

discharge rapporteur himself? MEP

Joachim Zeller provides insights into his

work, his relations with other standing

committees, and what in his view are the

essentials of the discharge procedure.

And last but not least, the role the ECA’s

annual report plays in this procedure,

which is one of the key prerogatives of a

parliamentary assembly.

More focus on performance

He speaks in measured tones but it is evident that Joachim Zeller has some very

clear ideas about the EP’s discharge and which direction discussions should take.

He immediately spells out one of his main wishes: ‘There should be more focus on

performance. In the past the ECA tended to be more compliance-oriented, but it is now

moving increasingly in the direction of performance.’ For the 2016 discharge rapporteur

the performance issues raised in the ECA special reports are very valuable: ‘They really

show how European money is working, what has been done and what is going on.’

For Joachim Zeller the ECA’s special reports should play a big part in the discussions

on discharge, and should do so even more in the future. ‘Error rates and whether, for

example, structural funds money is used in accordance with the rules is all important

but we should also look at what has been achieved with it. Often the press writes that

5% of EU taxpayers’ money was wasted. But this is not necessarily the whole picture.

Some of these projects did not comply with the rules, but they were still successful in

terms of achieving the intended results. At the same time there may also be error-free

projects which are completely useless.’

Multiple roles providing multiple perspectives

Joachim Zeller is not new to this ield: he is now, rather unexpectedly, discharge

rapporteur for the second time, having done the job once already for the 2015 inancial

year. And for the 2014 exercise he was the shadow rapporteur for his party. Besides

being a member of the Budgetary Control Committee he is also vice-chair for the

Regional Development Committee, full member of the Development Committee

and a substitute member for the Subcommittee on Human Rights. He explains the

advantages of having these multiple perspectives: ‘To be a member in these three

specialised committees, all connected with expenditure, is very useful. As rapporteur

for the discharge it is very useful to have direct discussions with and information from

sector committees.’ He also underlines that having all these functions can sometimes

also cause diiculties: ‘I sometimes obtain knowledge from my work in the Budgetary

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Auditing results to provide guidance for EU eforts in the future

continued

Control Committee, often from ECA reports, which colleagues in the other committees

do not have, such as information that provides insights into whether projects are

useful or not.’ He cites the example of information provided by the European External

Action Service, at the request of the current chair of the Budgetary Control Committee,

Ingeborg Grässle, on how EU projects are performing, even if this may sometimes lead

to negative assessments. Joachim Zeller continues: ‘A colleague in the Committee

on Development once said that this was an attack on the development policy of the

EU. But I do not believe it is; on the contrary, for us parliamentarians it is essential to

learn what is going on on the ground and then to discuss how to improve it. For some

colleagues it would have been ine if the Commission had limited itself to providing the

200 million euros, contracted it out to partners and then had done with it, not knowing

whether the objectives for which we had been providing the EU funding in the irst

place had actually been achieved.’

Joachim Zeller feels at ease in his role as rapporteur for

the discharge: ‘It gives me the chance to discuss topics

with many Commissioners and Directors-General, and it

enables me to get information which normally I would

not get or which would be much more diicult to get.

It is encouraging work!’ At the same time he inds that

the discharge exercise is clearly underestimated within

the European Parliament: ‘We should do something to

bring it more into the life of the whole EP. It cannot only

be an issue for the Budgetary Control Committee. For

the Parliament as a whole it should be an opportunity to

connect intentions to achievements: is it moving in the

right direction and have we used the right instruments

to move it that way?’ Joachim Zeller believes that for

many MEPs the discharge exercise can deliver a lot of

information. He underlines: ‘Other standing committees

often focus on protecting their policy area. But the idea is not to destroy their eforts;

we want, together with them, to think about whether our strategy is the right way to

achieve what we call European added value.’

Performance information needed as input for future action

For the rapporteur the issue of additional European value is clearly linked to having a

strategy for the future of the Union. He explains: ‘What can be achieved with EU funds

and what has been achieved with it are two sides of the same coin. At the beginning

we have a multi-annual strategy. Whether this is a good idea or not, I do not know, but

we have one. As district mayor in Berlin I had to follow the Lisbon Strategy regarding

the implementation of European funds. Then, when I became MEP in 2009, still one

of the last years of the Lisbon strategy, nobody was talking about it anymore. The

President of the European Commission said that it had failed. There was no discussion

of why, instead the Commission immediately drew up a new strategy, EU2020. And now

nobody is talking about EU2020. But a thorough review of the results of these strategies

could have provided the focal points for our common eforts to shape the future of the

Union.’

As to these eforts, Joachim Zeller does not beat about the bush. In his view three

points are essential: ‘Since the EU only has very limited natural resources we need

to focus on innovation to be able to compete on a global scale. So we need good

brains. Secondly, we need inclusion so that nobody feels left out. Thirdly, we need

sustainability to ensure our actions are also useful for the next generation. These three

principles should guide our way of thinking towards a new strategy.’

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Auditing results to provide guidance for EU eforts in the future

continued

The organised absence of responsibility

For Joachim Zeller assessing performance introduces the aspect of accountability: ‘Many

people will try to avoid being held accountable for performance.’ He recalls a book

which was entitled ‘The organised absence of responsibility’ to describe the situation

in East Germany during the communist era. He smiles, saying: ‘I sometimes get a bit of

this feeling in Europe. One of the problems might be that the EU does not have a clear

government that can be held accountable. The Commission is a collection of oicials.

They have to think about what the Council or the EP wants to have and they come up

with proposals on that basis. But in the end they are not really in charge, since quite

often implementation takes place at a diferent level, not at Commission level.’ He

continues with an example: ‘This is the case in shared management, where Member

States often do not deliver the intended results, do not sanction irregularities, and are

not willing to cooperate with the Commission to rectify shortcomings: that is, at least,

what the Commissioner for Regional Policy, Corina Crețu, often implies in her responses.’

The rapporteur explains that it is quite a disappointment for him to see that the EU

funds which are available are often not even used: ’In Romania there is such a need

for additional funding for projects on the ground. At the same time the Romanian

government still has a huge amount, around 30 billion euros, of unused cohesion

funding still available. When visiting Romania I met people who were in a position to

initiate useful projects with EU money at the level of the municipalities. But everything

comes to a halt at national level, not only because of problems with administrative

capacity, but also because of the political situation, the political divide in the country.

If a mayor does not belong to the political party in power at national level, he will get

nowhere with his project. This situation creates a substantial impediment to absorption

and carrying out good-quality projects.’

Organising the discharge process

Speaking about how the discharge discussions are organised, Joachim Zeller highlights

the role played by the shadow rapporteurs who come from each political group: ‘They

are active in meetings and help to draft questions to be directed to the Commissioners.

As rapporteur I collect these questions from all political groups and provide the

Commissioners with a consolidated questionnaire. So at an early stage I am already

cooperating with the shadow rapporteurs. This cooperation is important, since I will

need to get a majority for my discharge report not only in the Budgetary Control

Committee, but also in the plenary.’ Joachim Zeller underlines that the ECA’s annual

report forms the main basis for his discharge resolution, and also, increasingly, the ECA’s

special reports because of their performance information: ‘These indings provide the

core of the material which triggers most questions. The follow-up results presented are

also important. This is something we, as the parliament, cannot do on our own.’ As to

the hearings, he adds that both the Commissioners and Directors-General are keen to

receive questions well in advance of the hearings and are clearly interested in a genuine

exchange of views.

Same procedure as last year, same outcome as every year?

To what extent do EU citizens see something of the EP’s discharge of the EU budget?

According to Joachim Zeller this is a diicult question: ‘In almost all Member States the

media will mostly report on items relating to the Council, when their own government

and its ministers are active in Brussels. During recent years the situation has improved

slightly, as it is now recognised that the EP is in a co-decision procedure with the Council

and thereby involved in major decisions. But the discharge is done only by the EP

and the focus of the media is mainly on irregularities and nothing else.’ He goes on to

explain that the discharge procedure is also not that easy to understand: ‘That is why

EUU, Alm.del - 2017-18 - Bilag 233: Rapport fra den Europæiske Revisionsret december 2017

Auditing results to provide guidance for EU eforts in the future

continued

the media often try to simplify the message. And only bad news is interesting news …

But there is also room for improvement within the EP. Both the discharge and the ECA’s

special reports should be more appreciated and also taken up systematically by other

standing committees.’ But how do we create more interest? The rapporteur believes that

more information on performance issues will be key here: ‘Both the ECA, but also the

EP, can present bad and good examples. Quite often representatives of Member States’

management authorities say that auditors only want to ind where they failed and not

what they have achieved. This can destroy trust and we need trustful cooperation.’

Does Joachim Zeller see any changes and improvements in the discharge process? Or

is it merely a process that needs to be got out of the way before moving on to the next

year? The rapporteur feels that in the past this sometimes may have been the case: ‘Same

procedure as last year, same outcome as every year. But I hope this is changing now as

the focus shifts more and more towards performance. I believe the issue of performance

also needs to be an essential issue in the upcoming multi-annual inancial framework

discussions.’

Joachim Zeller also welcomes the fresh approach to the ECA’s Statement of Assurance,

as announced by ECA President Klaus-Heiner Lehne, and in particular the ECA’s intention

to make better use of the audit work done by others: ‘I hope that for both cohesion and

agriculture, i.e. the major expenditure areas in the EU budget, the 2017 report will show

some real changes in approach, content and key messages.’ As to the EU’s agricultural

policy, Joachim Zeller takes a clear stance: ‘We cannot continue to spend money on

agriculture as we do now. A lot of EU funding for agriculture goes into the bank accounts

of big industry, who do not really need it, certainly not if we consider their annual proits.

In this respect we should not forget that about 80% of EU agricultural funds are going

to 20% or less of the farmers. But this remains a sensitive topic of discussion with MEP

colleagues in the EP Agricultural Committee.’

Clear and visible results needed for a sustainable European Union

For Joachim Zeller, cohesion policy remains one of the spending priorities in the

upcoming MFF to stimulate inclusiveness and solidarity for EU citizens. Issues related to

development aid and migration form another important area. He adds: ‘The EU certainly

delivers its share here but how the money is spent often remains a black hole. Now

questions are being raised. A lot of money has been spent in developing countries but

why are so many people from these countries coming to Europe. Apparently they cannot

survive in their own country, which raises questions about the efects of EU aid. That

is why development policy must have more strings attached, be more conditional on

results. A lot of money goes to budget support in these countries or to UN organisations

in the hope that they are doing the right things.’ The rapporteur cites the example of

UNWRA, the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees: ‘70% of their budget

comes from the EU. I have seen with my own eyes that UNWRA has refugees living in ruins

on mountains of waste, a situation refugees have already been living in for years. When

UNWRA was asked why they could not help to create jobs to improve the situation for

these people, UNWRA replied that this was outside their mandate.’

Joachim Zeller is convinced that more focus should be put on performance in the

discharge debate to bring to light more information on what has been achieved with EU

funds. In his view discussing the results from the past is necessary to learn for the future:

‘You cannot adopt policy plans without evaluating achievements after implementation

if we want a learning and sustainable European Union. And last but not least, this should

also entail the introduction of performance as a key condition for obtaining EU funds

under the next multi-annual inancial framework period.’

EUU, Alm.del - 2017-18 - Bilag 233: Rapport fra den Europæiske Revisionsret december 2017

Presenting the Annual Report to Parliament

and Council

By Helena Piron Mäki-Korvela, Directorate of the Presidency

When published many ECA auditors are already working on the next

Annual Report. But after publication our stakeholders will spent till

April discussing it in the discharge procedure. Helena Piron Mäki-

Korvela gives us a short overview on what happens in the European

Parliament and Council.

Discharge starts and ends in Parliament

The discharge procedure on the EU budget always starts with the

publication and presentation of our Annual Report by our President to

the European Parliament’s Committee on Budgetary Control (CONT)

at their meeting in September/October, followed by a presentation

by the ECA President in a plenary meeting of the Parliament shortly

after. It ends in April the following year with a debate at the European

Parliament in plenary, followed by a vote on the detailed discharge

reports and signing of the European Parliament President of the inal

adopted reports. This year the presentation to the CONT took place on

28 September, followed by a presentation to the Parliament’s plenary

meeting in Strasbourg on 4 October.

Throughout the procedure the CONT organises hearings with key

Commissioners and Secretaries Generals of the EU institutions and

heads of EU agencies and Joint Undertakings, based on detailed

questionnaires. Particularly the CONT’s designated discharge

rapporteur – each year newly appointed and for the 2016 discharge

exercise MEP Joachim Zeller – is active during these hearings. In

addition, CONT also invites all other relevant European Parliament

specialised committees to submit their opinion on the discharge

reports relative to their area of competence. In this way for instance the

AGRI Chair Siekierski, accompanied by the AGRI secretariat staf, also

took part at the CONT hearing of Commissioner Hogan on agriculture

at their meeting this November, preparing for the AGRI opinion that

they are going to submit to CONT at the beginning of next year. These

speciic opinions by specialised committees, such as the Committee on

Development aid, Environment, Regional Development or Transport,

form an integral part of the discharge report as adopted each year.

The representatives of various specialised committees also take

the loor at the April plenary, bringing their concerns relative to the

implementation of the EU budget to the general debate before the

vote. In this way, the trend towards better performance of EU spending

has also become a general concern at the European Parliament, and

not just the concern of the lead committee CONT.

Process in the Council

After the publication of the Annual Report the irst presentation to the

Council is usually done by the ECA President to the Member States’

Ministers of Finance, assembled in the Economic and Financial Afairs

Council (ECOFIN). ECA President Klaus-Heiner Lehne presented the

2016 Annual Report in the ECOFIN meeting of 7 November 2017.

Members of the ECOFIN very much welcomed the report of the ECA

and thanked the President and the staf of the ECA for their important

ECA President Klaus-Heiner Lehne,

presenting the 2016 AR to the MEPs

at the plenary session in Strasbourg on

4 October 2017

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Presenting the Annual Report to Parliament and Council

continued

work. The hope was expressed that the positive developments in the Commission's inancial

management over the past year will prove to be sustainable.

A detailed discussion of the Annual Report takes place at working level: for the 2016

Discharge exercise Member States’ representatives discuss in several meetings the diferent

chapters. These meetings usually take place in January, in the presence of representatives of

the Commission’s DGs and of the ECA staf. Subsequently the Council drafts a report which

is, after adoption in the 20 February 2018 meeting, sent in March as a non-binding advice to

the European Parliament.

Granting of discharge

The European Parliament takes note of the Council’s advice when inalising its discharge

resolution in which it will grant discharge or not to the Commission and other EU institutions

and agencies.. In case the Parliament refuses discharge this means that the accounts of the

institution or agency concerned are not cleared. The organisation involved must act on the

recommendations of the European Parliament before seeking discharge again.

Over the years the Parliament has refused to grant discharge to various EU agencies and

bodies. To the Commission the Parliament has refused twice, leading to postponement of

the discharge: in 1984 for inancial year 1982 and in 1998, for inancial year 1996.

Once the discharge resolution for a inancial year is adopted, till now most often with

discharge granted to the European Commission, the EU institutions are requested to provide

written replies to the questions put forward in the discharge resolution. Most of these

questions are addressed to the Commission. Usually this process is inalised before the

summer recess of the European Parliament. The new discharge process starts in practice with

the publication of the ECA’s Annual Report.

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Council Budget Committee discusses audit

methodology and results with ECA auditors

By Andreas Bolkart, Directorate of the Presidency

In a one day seminar which took place on 23 November 2017, ECA auditors and the

Member State representatives of the Council Budget Committee discussed the audit

methodology and results of the Annual Report and the future Statement of Assurance

approach.

Plunging into the ECA’s audit approach

The seminar is an annual event that is used to provide a more in-depth view of ECA’s audit

methodology and approach. It is a good opportunity to deepen the discussions on these

subjects, aside from the normally very busy schedules of formal Council Budget Committee

meetings where ECA reports are presented and where the Council’s part of the discharge is

prepared.

The event was co-chaired by Daniela Vatrachki of the incoming Bulgarian Council

presidency, and Mariusz Pomienski, Director at the ECA. The event was structured by a series

of presentations by ECA auditors. To begin with Mariusz Pomienski and Paul Sime explained

the methodological basics on the ECA’s audit opinion. After that Judit Oroszki and Ilias

Nikolakopoulos presented the legality and regularity audit approach using the information

in the 2016 audit report.

Evolution to a qualiied opinion on payments

Concerning legality and regularity of payments, for the irst time since we started to provide

a statement of assurance in 1994, the ECA issued a qualiied opinion and not an adverse

one, because a signiicant part of the audited expenditure was not afected by a material

level of error. Moreover, there has been a sustained improvement in the estimated level of

error in the payments made from the EU budget over the last few years.

Figure 1: About half of audited 2016 expenditure is free from material error

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Council Budget Committee discusses audit methodology and results with

ECA auditors

continued

The Member State delegates and ECA auditors exchanged on a number of issues about

the audit opinion on payments, such as the reasons for the improvements, the speciic

developments in the large spending areas cohesion and agriculture, the signiicance of the

MFF spending cycle and likely future trends.

Figure 2: 2016 results of testing of EU spending areas

As in previous years, revenue for 2016, taken as a whole, was legal and regular and the ECA

gives a clean opinion on the reliability of the 2016 accounts of the European Union . This was

highlighted in a presentation by Jarek Smigiel, who zoomed in on ‘key audit matters’, a new

concept in the standards on auditing which was introduced in the ECA’s audit opinion on the

reliability of the accounts.

The work done for the review of budgetary management was presented by James McQuade

and Michael Tatianos. In this area the main issues of interest for Member State delegates

was the absorption capacity of Member States, high outstanding commitments and the

increasing role of inancial instruments.

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Council Budget Committee discusses audit methodology and results with

ECA auditors

continued

Figure 3: Outstanding expenditure from ESI funds (as at end of 2016; % of 2016 general

government expenditure)

Measuring performance of EU expenditure

Joël Costantzer and Bernadett Soós-Petek, gave a presentation on measuring performance of EU

expenditure. The Member States delegates showed great interest in this issue and in particular in the

ECA’s recommendation to simplify the Commission’s performance indicator framework. The afternoon

session started with presentations by Alberto Gasperoni and Bertrand Albugues on the ECA’s work for

auditing EU revenue and on administrative expenditure. In these areas the delegates were interested

in the impact of GNI changes on EU revenue and the ECA’s audit of the 5% staf reduction in EU

institutions following the inancial crisis.

Furthermore Elisa Gómez explained how the ECA takes account of corrective action that the

Commission implements following its own audits and controls as well as those of the ECA.

Moving forward with a modiied approach for compliance audit work

The inal session of the seminar was used to discuss the upcoming changes to the ECA’s audit approach.

ECA Directors Martin Weber and Mariusz Pomienski, gave an overview of the recent ECA decision to

adapt its audit approach to the improved control systems and positive trends in the error rates. From

the 2018 Statement of Assurance onwards, the ECA will, wherever the quality of control system allows

that, rely to a larger extent on the results of upstream controls and checks.

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Council Budget Committee discusses audit methodology and results with

ECA auditors

continued

For the Cohesion area the approach could look like presented in

Figure 4

below.

The Members States delegates were generally welcoming this move but were also very

interested to hear how the sampling will work, how the approach will afect cross-sectional

and historical comparison, and how the approach might impact the auditee’s behaviour.

EUU, Alm.del - 2017-18 - Bilag 233: Rapport fra den Europæiske Revisionsret december 2017

Reaching out to ECA’s national parliaments

and Member State authorities

By Gaston Moonen, Directorate of the Presidency

Almost 80% of the EU budget is spent in shared management with the

Member States, mostly in the areas of agriculture and cohesion. The ECA

regularly inds both good practices but also weaknesses in management

systems at Member States’ level and errors which could have been

prevented by Member States’ authorities. The more important that

Member States’ authorities and national parliaments become aware of ECA

observations and recommendations for improvement. To be successful

in inluencing decision-making on EU inancial management and other

administrative practices the ECA increasingly reaches out to national

parliaments and government authorities.

It would go too far here to go into detail on the often tailor-made activities

undertaken, mostly by the ECA Members and their private oice staf, in

the Member States. But the map below gives an overview of activities

undertaken or foreseen In the near future to highlight the 2016 Annual

Report indings. Often during the visits the ECA representatives also draws

attention to recently published special reports, particularly when they

concern the Member State visited.

Map: Meetings with national parliament

and/or Member State authorities to present

the 2016 Annual Report and other recent

ECA publications

EUU, Alm.del - 2017-18 - Bilag 233: Rapport fra den Europæiske Revisionsret december 2017

Catching the attention of the media

By Mark Rogerson, Directorate of the Presidency

We put a lot of efort into disseminating our reports and reaching out to the media,

but what are journalists looking for? Our Spokesperson, Mark Rogerson, explains.

Arousing media interest

A key group to whom we send our Annual Report – and our special reports for

that matter – is the press. Now, the press is not actually an audience in the strict

sense of the word; they are one route to the ultimate audiences we do want to

reach. Whether it’s Members of the European Parliament, industry stakeholders,

ordinary citizens in the Member States or even other members of the audit

profession, we want them to read about our report in their favourite newspaper

or journal or on their favourite news website. But therein lies the problem:

we have to interest the press in the content of our reports if we are going to

persuade them to write about us and what interests journalists most of the time

is bad news, not good.

“EU inances in a complete mess” will catch the eye of a news editor more readily

than “EU inances coming along quite nicely”. Indeed, I have a personal theory

that in some of the UK tabloid newsrooms they have the headline “Bumbling

Brussels bureaucrats waste billons” permanently set up on their computers and

are just waiting for a story to come along that they can run underneath it.

The conclusion from all this is absolutely

not

that we should accentuate the

negative and pander to their desire for doom and gloom. But it does mean we

have to accept that what they are looking for is a story, something new and

interesting and diferent which they can use to ill a few column centimetres

in what is an incredibly competitive news environment. If our reports tell a

compelling story, they will attract the attention of reporters and correspondents

who will write about them. Those stories will be appreciated by news editors

who will run them, and ultimately they will be read by the people we want to see

them. It is as simple, or as complicated, as that.

How to provide a compelling story?

So what should that story be? First of all, it has to be rooted irmly in our audit

indings. Although, with all due respect to our hard–working auditors, those

indings by themselves are not necessarily the story. It’s like when you go for a

health check-up. They measure heart-rate and blood sugar and all sorts of other

things and come up with various measurements in micrograms per millilitre or

some equally esoteric formulation. But that alone does not tell you whether you

are it and well or ready to drop. You need the doctor to explain that you are all

ine, or you need to exercise more or cut out the afternoon piece of cake. That is

the story you are waiting to hear after your check-up and we tell the equivalent

of that story each year with our Annual Report. We answer the question, how

healthy are the EU’s inances?

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Catching the attention of the media

continued

Visit by Brussels Press at the ECA

Secondly, our story should – as much as possible – be about people rather than abstract concepts.

Journalists like to write about people and the problems they face (or have overcome). And people

like reading stories about other people. The more we can put a human face on the indings in our

Annual Report and in our special reports – the more our stories will be compelling.

Thirdly, our story should be clear and concise. We talk a lot about clear writing at the ECA and I think

our Executive Summaries, for example, and the Audit in Brief for the Annual Report have become

much more readable in recent years. Journalists who want to write more than just a few hundred

words on our reports will read the actual documents, not just the press release. The more they ind

clear and easy-to-understand language, the more they will use.

No magic but common sense

There is no magic bullet which will ensure maximum media coverage for all our reports. Like

everyone else, we are at the mercy of the news agenda – if another big story comes along on our day

of publication we run the risk of being squeezed out. But if we tell a clear, compelling story with a

strong degree of human interest, at least we stand a good chance.

EUU, Alm.del - 2017-18 - Bilag 233: Rapport fra den Europæiske Revisionsret december 2017

Reaching out to key stakeholders with our

Stakeholder Management System

By Helena Piron Mäki-Korvela, Directorate of the Presidency

To better serve our stakeholders the ECA established a Stakeholder Management

System in 2015. Helena Mäki-Korvela explains what it does and its irst results.

Targeted communication to stakeholders

The ECA keeps making special eforts to ensure that our Annual Report – and other ECA output -

gets communicated in a targeted way to our key stakeholders and the media, immediately after

their publication at our website. Since 2015 the Stakeholder Management System (SMS) - a IT

communications tool developed in-house - has been used for this purpose, allowing sending

communications simultaneously in 23 EU languages to large numbers of selected audiences

based on various criteria instead of using simple mailing lists.

On the morning of the publication of our 2016 Annual Report on 28 September 2017, 6 670

persons out of the current 12 233 contacts contained in the SMS database received an electronic

publication notice of our 2016 Annual Report, based on the press release and the quote from

ECA President Lehne. They were selected because they had previously indicated a special

interest in receiving publications such as our Annual Report. Among these were all the MEPs

of the European Parliament, all Commissioners and their cabinets, all Ministers of Finance,

Economy, Agriculture, Transport, Environment, Energy, Social Afairs and Employment, as well

as the competent committee MPs of the national parliaments including those dealing with

EU Afairs and Public Accounts in the EU Member States. Each one received this notice in their

own language. We also made sure that the various levels of national and regional authorities

responsible for managing EU agricultural and cohesion spending was informed of our detailed

indings and recommendations. In addition, also a number of academics, non-governmental and

international organisations were informed of our publication.

Our oicial publication notices are also communicated via the SMS system instead of the

traditional sending of hard copies of reports in 23 EU languages enclosed with hand signed

letters, as done previously. Thanks to the eiciency of the system we have been able to

discontinue publishing our reports in paper format, with the exception of the EU Audit in Brief,

the summary document of the Annual Report.

Feedback on targeted messaging very positive

For the ECA Communication and media relations service the SMS is

an essential tool to reach out to media both in Brussels and in the

Member States keeping them informed of our work and inviting

them to our press brieings. Around one third of the recipients of our

messages about the 2016 annual report were media representatives.

This targeted communication via SMS is also appreciated by

our contacts inthe other EU Institutions, such as the European

Parliament. They are now better informed of our work thanks to the

communications of our results in a digestible format in their own

language and on real time. Sharing of our electronic communications

with other potentially interested colleagues is now also easy. The

same applies to the Member States’ representatives of diferent levels,

including national ministries and parliamentary committees.

Cover page of the 2016 EU Audit in brief

You may be pleased to hear that anyone interested in receiving our

communications notices of their choice of topics, language and

publication type may register on the online form at our website:

https://www.eca.europa.eu/en/Pages/Publications.aspx

EUU, Alm.del - 2017-18 - Bilag 233: Rapport fra den Europæiske Revisionsret december 2017

The 2016 ECA Annual Report in the media

headlines

By Damijan Fišer Directorate of the Presidency

The Annual Report is the ECA’s lagship publication. But it’s not always the one with the

highest media impact. The ECA press oicer Damijan Fišer explains why, and looks at this

year’s main headlines.

ECA Annual Rreport – a wealth of information on EU inances

The Annual Report continues to be the ECA’s lagship product and is every year eagerly

anticipated by the stakeholders and media. It is in fact the one report that we present on the

same day of the publication to the European Parliament’s Budgetary Control Committee

and the press in Brussels. It contains over 300 pages on the EU’s inancial management and

is a document of reference for everyone with a stake or interest in the EU’s inances.

Behind the scenes – the making of

Almost half of our auditors are somehow involved in making the Annual Report happen

every year in autumn, so that the Parliament and Council can use it in good time as a

major tool in their discharge process. Commencing their preparatory work the year before,

our auditors check over 1000 EU budget payments – from the accounting entry down

to the inal recipient – mostly in the winter months, analyse their indings in the spring,

clear the facts before the summer and agree their observations and recommendations,

which just about makes for a full year’s production cycle. This is before the publication and

communications teams take over to whip their work into a reader-friendly shape.

Bad news sells better: headlining error rate and worrisome prospects.

In journalists’ minds, our annual report has become almost synonymous with the level

of error or error rate and main headlines traditionally sport the error rate, which quite

readily lends itself to a sensationalist title. This year it continued to fall and was below the

materiality threshold for around half of EU spending, the reason why we gave a qualiied

opinion on payments rather than a negative, fail mark - for the irst time! This is also relected

in the headline of our press release which says:

EU accounts true and fair and share of irregular spending further reduced in 2016,

say EU auditors

Good news for the citizens, but not necessarily for the journalists. It is no news that bad

news sells (more copies), so this may well be a reason for a somewhat lower level of media

coverage of the 2016 Annual Report compared to previous years. At the same time, the

media confusion between accounts and payments, misspending and waste (or worse, fraud)

appears to have been cleared efectively owing to our ancillary communications such as the

press release and FAQ sheet.

Main headlines this year featured the money misspent and the growing concern of record-

high unpaid funds, but also the important improvement in the EU’s inances.

EUU, Alm.del - 2017-18 - Bilag 233: Rapport fra den Europæiske Revisionsret december 2017

The 2016 ECA Annual Report in the media headlines

continued

Examples of some media headings

ECA reports: media coverage in perspective

Media presence is one of ECA’s key performance indicators. We measured that this year

the Annual Report gave rise to around 200 articles in 20 Member States. Most articles were

written in Austria, followed by Romania, the UK and Netherlands, while Sweden, Lithuania,

Bulgaria and Belgium were tied at 5

place. The media map was diferent last year, when

Austria and the Netherlands were just below Top 5, and media coverage was spearheaded

by Germany, followed by Spain, France and Poland.

EUU, Alm.del - 2017-18 - Bilag 233: Rapport fra den Europæiske Revisionsret december 2017

Enhancing the impact of our Annual Report

By Rimantas Šadžius, ECA Member

Rimantas Šadžius, ECA Member. meeting with Saulius Skvernelis, Prime Minister

of the Republic of Lithuania

Early start

This year we presented our 2016 Annual Report on the implementation

of the EU budget earlier than ever before. This not only allows the

discharge procedure to start earlier; it also enables us to communicate

the message of the 2016 Annual Report to the Member States earlier,

generally before the national budgets are adopted. This was a good

opportunity for us, as Members, to increase the visibility of the Court’s

work both at European and national level. Presenting the Annual Report

– an opportunity to reach out to stakeholders in Member States.

My goal is to maximise the number and variety of stakeholders reached

and raise their awareness of and interest in the 2016 Annual Report

and indeed all the work we do. I believe that one of the key factors in

reaching a wider range of stakeholders is to extend the presentation

and adapt it to the speciic needs of the audience. Moreover, awareness

of the ECA’s activities in the Member States could improve citizens’

awareness of what works well and what does not work in EU spending

and thereby help to renew trust in the EU institutions. I therefore went

to the country I know best, Lithuania, as soon as possible after the

presentation of the 2016 Annual Report to the European Parliament.

My team and I left for Lithuania at the end of October 2017 in order to

present the most topical ECA activities, publicise the audit results of the

2016 Annual Report and discuss the most recent special reports.

Rimantas Šadžius is the ECA

Member responsible for

Institutional Relations. The

publication of the 2016 ECA

Annual Report ofers an excellent

opportunity to bolster the ECA’s

institutional relations at diferent

levels. In this article he highlights

the kind of activities that can

be (and have been) undertaken

to increase the visibility of ECA

products at Member State level.

EUU, Alm.del - 2017-18 - Bilag 233: Rapport fra den Europæiske Revisionsret december 2017

Enhancing the impact of our Annual Report

continued

In order to promote the ECA in general, and the annual report more

speciically, to policymakers, I had a number of meetings with high-

ranking oicials. Notably I met with and made presentations to the Prime

Minister and Ministers for Energy and Agriculture, as well the Chairs

of the Seimas (Parliamentary) committees on Economics and Budget

and Finance. I also gave presentations at a joint meeting of the Seimas

committees on European Afairs and Audit, and one at a meeting of the

Seimas committee on Rural Afairs.

Bringing Brussels and Luxembourg to the national capitals

My key message to the Lithuanian authorities and the wider public was

that there are very relevant results from the ECA’s work that are directly

linked to what is happening in Lithuania. The ECA auditors’ observations

and conclusions regarding the areas audited could be transposed to

create best practices to be followed in any Member State, including

Lithuania. Some politicians were concerned to hear that the payments

backlog from the EU budget was almost twice as large as the annual EU

budget at the end of 2016. There were also discussions on the level of use

of the European Structural and Investment funds in Lithuania and the

high proportion of these funds in overall government spending, which

was a lifesaver back in 2009 after the national inances were hit by the

inancial crisis. Concerns were raised regarding the upcoming discussions

for the future Multiannual Financial Framework and future funding from

the EU, especially with regard to the fact that Lithuania is very close to

the 75 percent ceiling of EU average GDP per capita. In this context the

discussion on the future of inancial instruments as an alternative to

decreasing subsidies was very much welcomed. Politicians dealing with

agriculture were mostly concerned that there was no level playing ield

regarding direct payments across the Member States, stating their view

that this puts Lithuanian farmers at a disadvantage in the single European

market.

Rimantas Šadžius, ECA Member, presenting the 2016 Annual Report to Minister of Agriculture,

Bronius Markauskas, and his team

EUU, Alm.del - 2017-18 - Bilag 233: Rapport fra den Europæiske Revisionsret december 2017

Enhancing the impact of our Annual Report

continued

Work accomplished… and future approach

Speciically in the interests of audit and publicising our methods as well as

our work, I made a presentation to the Auditor General, the Board and staf

of the National Audit Oice. The presentation of the Annual Report is always

a good opportunity to present our audit programme and exchange best

practices with our colleagues. One of my aims was to stimulate the auditors’

interest and not only exchange ideas regarding professional topics, but also

encourage discussion on how the ECA can increase awareness of its audit

work and maximise added value. As well as presenting the results of the 2016

Annual Report, I also highlighted the ECA’s enhanced communication eforts.

The Lithuanian auditors showed great interest in the diferent ways in which we

try to leverage ECA publications and the ways the ECA reaches out to diferent

stakeholders.

Rimantas Šadžius, ECA Member, meeting with Arūnas Dulkys, Auditor General of the

National Audit Oice of the Republic of Lithuania

I also had the opportunity to address the public at large. Not only are the

media important stakeholders, but through them we can reach out to citizens

directly. I spoke on Lithuanian national radio and television, as well to the

national newspaper ‘Kauno diena.’ I was also invited to give a lecture at the

Kaunas University of Technology to students - mostly studying economics

and auditing - from three diferent Lithuanian universities. This was an

excellent opportunity, not only to engage with citizens, but also to reach out

to academia, which is one of the ECA’s goals in the 2018-2020 Strategy. I gave

a short overview of the institutional framework of the Union and the position

and role of the ECA. I briely presented the results of the ECA’s performance

audits in several policy areas, in particular in the area of inancial and economic

governance, and highlighted the organisational set-up of the ECA and its

audit priorities for 2018. I was pleasantly surprised by the keen interest of the

audience and their thought-provoking questions on EU matters.

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Enhancing the impact of our Annual Report

continued

This clearly conirmed my feeling that a tailored approach to the target audience is

most important when reaching out to relevant stakeholders.

Rimantas Šadžius, ECA Member, giving an interview on National Radio and Television

Meetings beyond Lithuania

In my capacity as Member responsible for the ECA’s Institutional Relations, I have met

various groups of stakeholders. With them I have explored ideas on how to increase

the impact of and interest in the ECA’s work and products. Meetings with the Ministers

for Finance of Malta, Estonia, Bulgaria and Austria conirmed what we already know –

we need to be closer to our stakeholders in the Member States, tailor our approach to

the target audience to make it more relevant, time the publication of certain reports

better and engage more with our stakeholders. Let’s continue our joint eforts.

EUU, Alm.del - 2017-18 - Bilag 233: Rapport fra den Europæiske Revisionsret december 2017

'Ipsa scientia potestas est' (Knowledge itself is

power): the 2017 edition of the annual

ECA Training Day

By Maryliz Thymaki, Directorate of Human Resources, Finance and General Services

Training for staf is a crucial

element for an audit

organisation like the ECA where

staf is the institution’s key

asset. The annual Training Day

the ECA organises is the annual

highlight in the numerous

training activities undertaken

throughout the year. Maryliz

Thymaki, closely involved in

the preparation and execution

of the 2017 edition, ills us in

on aim, form and variety of the

many activities undertaken.

The ECA Professional Training team with in the middle key speaker Alberto Cairo

Sparkling learning as starting point

On Tuesday 21 November 2017, the European Court of Auditors

celebrated its annual Training Day, or

Fête (Faites) de la Formation.

This is the fourth consecutive year in which we have held this full-day

event, which promotes lifelong learning and is dedicated exclusively

to training activities for ECA staf. A record number of 584 registrations

were submitted, 392 staf members participated in the activities ofered

and the satisfaction rate was 81%. But what makes Training Day such

a successful event? To answer this question, let us call to mind Alfred

Mercier’s words: “What we learn with pleasure, we never forget”. This is

exactly the spirit behind Training Day: it combines knowledge and fun,

business and pleasure, training and playfulness, professionalism and

camaraderie.

Visual Trumpery: visual information as a tool for deception

This year’s Training Day began with an address by the ECA President

Klaus-Heiner Lehne. He emphasised the important role training – and

hence also Training Day – plays not only in disseminating knowledge, but

also in helping the institution move forward and adapt to the challenges

that lie ahead. The loor was then given to Jesus Nieto, a senior auditor,

who introduced special guest and key speaker Alberto Cairo, Knight

Chair in Visual Journalism at the School of Communication of the

University of Miami. Alberto Cairo gave a presentation entitled ‘Visual

Trumpery’, during which he explained how ‘graphicacy’ (proiciency in

presenting visual information) is not simply a powerful communication

skill, but also has the potential to mislead the audience. He also shared

tips on minimising this risk when producing graphs and presented ways

to better interpret visual data. These tips were welcomed by the ECA’s

Secretary-General, Eduardo Ruiz García, who also expressed his wish for

the ECA to make more widespread use of graphs in our products.

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Training Day 2017

continued

In the afternoon, Alberto Cairo elaborated further on the theme of 'data

visualisation’ during two workshops for those who wanted to know more. He

pinpointed the best ways to represent data and the circumstances in which

interactive graphs should be used. He also shared techniques for transforming

charts and maps into narrative pieces.

Heterogeneous training menu: from audit methodology to stress

management

Overall, 22 workshops (lasting either 90 or 180 minutes) took place in the

afternoon, covering 16 diferent topics so as to enable everyone to ind

something to their liking: translation, management, administration, IT, and soft

skills were just a few of the subjects covered. And of course, we could not hold

a day dedicated to professional training at the European Court of Auditors

without workshops dedicated to audit.

More speciically, following the success of last year’s Audit Fair, Supreme Audit

Institutions from six diferent Member States (Cyprus, Estonia, Finland, Latvia,

the Netherlands and the United Kingdom) visited the ECA to give an overview

of their audit methodologies in a speciic area. The Audit Fair was organised

as part of the ECA strategy, in which knowledge development, sharing and

exchange are and continue to be

pivotal.

Presenters gave an overview of

products of theirs that correspond to what we at the ECA call ‘Rapid Case

Reviews’ (quick analyses of the facts surrounding concerns raised by the public,

media, parliament, or other parties). Such products are usually rather recent,

and the procedures for selecting, conducting and compiling these reviews are

still not set in stone. The event therefore proved to be an invaluable experience

for the external experts and the auditors present alike.

Other audit-related training opportunities included the ECAlab, which focused

on exploring new information technologies for audit. These comprise big data

analysis, visual data analysis, text mining and blockchain technology. During

this session, participants even had the chance to experiment with the ECA’s

own cryptocurrency, created especially for our institution’s 40th anniversary.

Staf who go on missions had the opportunity to familiarise themselves

with the dangers and security issues people face on mission in countries

that are high-risk (to varying degrees) and the best ways to tackle them.

Representatives from the European External Action Service provided useful

advice through an interactive presentation and replied to all the participants’

questions and concerns.

Managers also had a wide range of training to choose from on this special day:

issues addressed in their workshops included the characteristics of managers,

ways they can better motivate their staf or how they themselves can become

more eicient, the fears and challenges newly-appointed managers face, the

unconscious bias sometimes present in speciic situations and tips and tricks

on how to eliminate them.

In addition to these training activities, which were about professional

development, others emphasised the importance of striking a balance

between our professional and private lives. These workshops analysed ways

to prevent and detect burnout, how mindfulness can be used as a stress

management tool and even how to better manage your physical energy at

work by doing some simple exercises. Training courses were also ofered

on basic irst aid, how to care for your eyes and how to reduce your carbon

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Training Day 2017

continued

footprint. Of course, the above description is not an exhaustive list of the

training courses on ofer that day – the ECA staf had many more to explore!

This year once again, there was also something for staf interested in

obtaining more information about training opportunities, tools and services:

the European School of Administration and the National Institute for the

Development of Continuing Vocational Training presented their programmes

at stands on the Court’s premises and answered participants’ questions.

Playful intermezzo: the ECAcup performance

There was also an unexpected treat for everyone during the lunch break: our

ECAcup

performance! This was a fun team-building activity involving staf

members of diferent ages, backgrounds and professions, who came together

to play their cups in unison to the ECA’s very own take on Anna Kendrick’s

famous song “Cups”. Children got involved too, playing their cups on the loor

around the European lag. The lyrics were adapted to the ECA’s work and

history by our own English language team. Our choir, together with the band,

performed the song live whilst a group of around 40 people accompanied

them with their cups, which were either blue or yellow (the colours of the

European Union lag).

ECAcup

was a major success and won compliments from

people both inside and outside the institution. The fact that the performance

crossed the generational divide, involving as it did staf of all ages (and

children especially), was hailed by many as a strong and optimistic message for

Europe’s future despite the increasing challenges.

ECAcup

performance during the

lunch break

Individual beneit to become an institutional beneit

In conclusion, everybody who participated in this year’s Training Day seemed

to enjoy it and beneit from it. The record numbers in attendance this year

certainly attest to this. Despite all the hard work that goes into the day, it has

become a recurring event, one that is highly appreciated by ECA management

and its staf, for obvious reasons. No-one can deny the general truth behind

the Latin proverb ‘Ipsas Scientia potestas est’ (knowledge itself is power), but

it is only when we read it together with a famous quote by Benjamin Franklin,

‘”An investment in knowledge pays the best interest”, that we can understand

the true value of training.

EUU, Alm.del - 2017-18 - Bilag 233: Rapport fra den Europæiske Revisionsret december 2017

Language is all we have – some thoughts

after the irst ECA Clear Language Awards

By Dominiek Braet, Euroclear, content strategist, trainer

The ECA clear language events are here to stay - certainly now that

awards have been introduced for several categories. This shows the

ECA’s commitment to getting the practice of writing in clear language

into its DNA. The jury for the awards was made up of three external

experts: Susana Muñoz (University of Luxembourg), Jan Inghelram

(European Court of Justice) and Dominiek Braet (Euroclear, Brussels).

Dominiek gives his views on the event, the jury’s considerations and

advice for further improvement.

Dominiek Braet

Short phrase, key moment

"After all… language is all we have ..." Secretary-General Eduardo Ruiz García paused a little

before he said these words at the end of the ECA Clear Language Event on 15 November

2017. This event also marked a new milestone for the ECA: the irst ECA Clear Language

Awards ceremony.

Language is all auditors have when, after in-depth scrutinising and audire (listening - Latin),

they draft the report. And all the readers have are words, when reading and using the

indings, conclusions and recommendations in our reports and other publications.

The phrase, the silence, the moment had something vulnerable about it, and strong -

cathartic in a way. It literally felt like after all. After the progress made over the past four years

of the ECA’s clear language campaign, started by Alex Brenninkmeijer, ECA Member.

From left to right: irst row - Susana Muñoz, University of Luxembourg; Maria Eulàlia Reverté i Casas,

auditor; Alex Brenninkmeijer, ECA Member; Di Hai, auditor; Aleksandra Klis‐Lemieszonek, auditor;

Dominiek Braet, Euroclear Brussels; Jan Inghelram, Director, ECJ.

Second row: Paul Staford, Principal Manager; Kristina Maksinen, auditor; Michiel Sweerts, auditor;

Mirko Iaconisi, auditor; Paul Sime, auditor; Fernando Pascual Gil, auditor

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Language is all we have – some thoughts after the irst ECA Clear Language

Awards

continued

After dropping all the ballast, governese and other verbosity, what’s really at stake? Trust. People

living in the EU - I consciously avoid the term ‘the EU citizen’ here - must be able to trust the

EU. Does the EU spend our money (not: ‘its funding’) wisely and correctly? The guardians of the

EU’s inances play a crucial role in answering this question. Still, an answer is only an answer if it

reaches the audience, and if the audience understands it. Trust is built on awareness, perception

and understanding. That’s why clear language contributes so much to fostering trust, for all EU

Institutions.

Signiicant progress has been made over the past four years since the ECA started its clear language

campaign. Still, there are aspects which can be improved upon, and that’s also what you can read in

the ECA’s strategy for 2018-2020: “Successfully addressing the challenges of the Union will require

clear, reliable and accessible information for the EU citizen on what has been achieved with EU

money and other interventions. “

If the ECA succeeds in delivering upon its strategy with consistent use of plain language, showing

empathy towards readers with speciic products for speciic audiences, the staf of the ECA will have

generated a key momentum… for Europe.

And the winners are …

The 2016 award winners stand out as examples of good practice to follow by others in the following

ive categories: “Best Title”, “Best Executive Summary”, “Best Conclusions and Recommendations”,

“Best Visuals” and “Best single graph”.

Award

Best Title

Best Executive Summary

Best Conclusions and

Recommendations

Best Visuals

Best single graph

Report itle

Rail freight transport in the EU: still not on the right

track

Combating Food Waste: an opportunity for the EU to

improve the resource eiciency of the food supply

chain

The EU Institutions can do more to facilitate access

to their public procurement

Governance at the European Commission – best

practice?

Union Civil Protection Mechanism: the coordination

of responses to disasters outside the EU has been

broadly efective - Annex 1

Report number

SR 8/2016

SR 34/2016

SR 17/2016

SR 27/2016

SR 33/2016

The award-winning reports were those that received the highest total score in their category, as

an aggregate of the Jury members’ individual scores. The scorecards included criteria ranging from

readability index igures to questions such as ‘Is the report likely to have an impact on the reader?’

We, the jury, enjoyed reading a great deal of efective communication across all the award

categories. We particularly appreciated -

•

The clear and appealing titles, using wordplay ranging from in troubled waters (report

on maritime transport in the EU – SR 23/2016) to still not on the right track in the award-

winning title (on rail freight transport in the EU - SR 8/2016). The reader’s brain starts

visualising the issue while reading them, and that’s a good thing. When kept short and crisp,

such titles stimulate curiosity to ind out more and start reading.

The storytelling techniques, as applied in the Summary of the award-winning report on food

waste (SR 34/2016) – a vast topic, very well summarised, with a logical build-up, including

facts and indings that speak to the reader. The recommendations are crystal clear and kept

to just three. They truly inspire us to starting acting upon them, and isn’t that the goal of

recommendations?

•

EUU, Alm.del - 2017-18 - Bilag 233: Rapport fra den Europæiske Revisionsret december 2017

Language is all we have – some thoughts after the irst ECA Clear Language

Awards

continued

•

The way in which the Conclusions and recommendations section

in the award-winning report on access to public procurement

(Special Report 17/2016) hits the nail from the start with ‘better

value for money’ (goal and result of easy-to-access public

procurement). The conclusion is short and clear: the institutions

can do more. The recommendations are actionable, with

suggested timing and an interesting call for a one-stop shop.

The variety of graphs and creative visualisation as explored in the award-

winning report on Governance at the European Commission – best

practice? (Special Report 27/2016) and, for its Annex 1 as the “Best single

graph”, the report on Union Civil Protection Mechanism: the coordination

of responses to disasters outside the EU has been broadly efective.

(Special Report 33/2016). Many audit topics relate to steps, worklows,

processes. Flowcharts, grids and timelines can take readers a long way

towards grasping how things work and what happens, and towards

picturing (pun intended) what works, or not. ECA reports contain more

and more visuals – a trend which should be pursued, with the help of

graphic designers (see also ‘Three recommendations for the ECA’). As a

Jury, we wanted to recognise people’s dedication and sense of initiative

in presenting information visually. Graphs can bring out messages that

would otherwise be buried in text. They can be a smart way to capture

various layers of information - how about this example?

EUU, Alm.del - 2017-18 - Bilag 233: Rapport fra den Europæiske Revisionsret december 2017

Language is all we have – some thoughts after the irst ECA Clear Language

Awards

continued

We congratulate all the people who worked on the reports that were

nominated and won awards.

Three recommendations for the ECA

Clearly, there is still room for improvement. Based on the review exercise:

When the ECA needs to make a point, make it to-the-point.

Verbosity tends to sneak into sentences when the content or

context is somewhat sensitive - with the risk of burying the

message.

In particular, recommendations that become long paragraphs

sufer from this.

Cut out more words, split

up more sentences

Overall, the average sentence length is often above 20 words.

Readability index scores point to ‘Complex’ or ‘Diicult’ levels.

There are ways to cut or split and increase readability. Use

readability indexes to monitor readability.

A good visual can be extremely useful in bringing clarity for

readers. And it takes far less time for readers to process than the

equivalent information written as full text. Yet creating good

visuals is an art. Visuals, graphs, videos all deserve the added value

designers can bring.

When it comes to hitting

the mark, hit it!

Further professionalise

graphic design and data

visualisation

Awards are a good idea

It usually takes several years for an organisation to change its tone of

voice and adopt plain language.

Typically, when an organisation – public or private – starts an award

competition, embracing ‘the hidden obvious’ becomes the new norm.

Beyond the report-writing guides, which may have been around for years,

at this point it is all about two key insights which need to be shared by

staf at all levels:

we are communicators as much as professional experts

(auditors, in the case of the ECA), – the products we deliver are

communication, language;

we must write for the reader, and the reader prefers plain

language,

irrespective

of his/her level of education and subject

matter expertise – and the latter is key.

Moving towards plain language does not mean that

everybody

or all

colleagues must share this belief, or apply all the report-writing guide

rules from the outset, but it requires that the dynamics within the

organisation shift.

EUU, Alm.del - 2017-18 - Bilag 233: Rapport fra den Europæiske Revisionsret december 2017

Language is all we have – some thoughts after the irst ECA Clear Language

Awards

continued

Progress towards plain language writing should no longer depend on the perseverance

of individuals –

intrapreneurs,

people or teams. That is very hard to achieve: often,

people give their all for ‘the cause’ up to the verge of burn-out.

When reviewing the diferent 2016 ECA reports we as Jury members saw clearly that the

authors had gone to diferent lengths in the application of clear language principles.

With the introduction of the awards, there is something additional to live up to. And

every person in the organisation becomes responsible for his or her use of plain

language.

Clear language campaigns have been around in the EU institutions for several years.

Still, many plain language advocates are convinced that only a Plain Language Act (as in

the US, since 2010) will bring lasting change. This may well be true, as trust is key… and

language is all we have.

Jan Inghelram, director European Court of Justice; Gaile Dagiliene, ECA director; Eduardo Ruiz García, ECA Secretary General; Alex

Brenninkmeijer, ECA Member; Susana Munoz, fellow of the Robert Schuman Insitute of European Afairs University of Luxembourg

EUU, Alm.del - 2017-18 - Bilag 233: Rapport fra den Europæiske Revisionsret december 2017

Regulatory Impact Analysis discussed at the ECA

By Stéphanie Girard, Private Oice of Danièle Lamarque, ECA Member

An international symposium on Regulatory Impact Analysis (RIA) was

organised on 23 and 24 November 2017, in collaboration with the journal

Politiques et management public. It gathered around 100 participants

consisting of academics, think thanks, research centers, international

organisations, European, national and local institutions to discuss RIA.

In his opening address, ECA President Klaus-Heiner Lehne referred to

Voltaire who said: ’If you want good laws, burn those you have and make

new ones.’ He emphasised to be a proponent of evolution rather than

revolution: ’If you want good laws, prepare them well, and then do not

forget to evaluate them.’

Why does regulatory impact analysis matter?

The most important ’raison d’être’ of Regulatory Impact Analysis is linked

to one of the core European values: democracy. Potential impacts of draft

laws need to be assessed upstream to limit the risk that proposed laws

are arbitrary. Citizens have to be given the trust that laws are made to

their beneit. They are therefore an essential tool for good governance

and public policy, as advocated by the OECD

. Several countries are

already using RIAs (with diferent levels of success) as well as the

European Commission, which considers RIAs as a key element of its

‘Better Regulation’ agenda. In that sense, RIAs could be considered as a

tool to counter populism.

Regulatory Impact Analysis

has establsihed itself as a tool

for improving legislation and

streamlining public decision-

making. These two goals have a

striking resemblance with what

public audit institutions try to

achieve through their audits and

recommendations. The more

reason for Danièle Lamarque, ECA

Member, to initiate a symposium on

this topic at the ECA.

1 See also OECD’s “Recommendation of the Council on regulatory policy and governance”

EUU, Alm.del - 2017-18 - Bilag 233: Rapport fra den Europæiske Revisionsret december 2017

Regulatory Impact Analysis discussed at the ECA

continued

How to maximise the possible impact of RIAs

Regulatory Impact Analysis is not an end in itself but a tool and a process

aiming at adopting good laws or regulations. During the symposium

several examples were discussed on how RIAs have been developped in

diferent environments and legal frameworks (national/European).

The presentations and discussions permitted to agree that a number of

conditions need to be met to maximise the impact of RIAs: they should:

•

be integrated at the early stages of policy processes;

be proportional to the signiicance of the planned regulation;

cover both quantitative and qualitative information to take account

of economic, social and environmental potential impacts of the

planned regulation;

clearly state who is likely to beneit from the proposed regulation and

who is likely to bear the costs;

include an analysis of alternative policy options when possible as well

as an assessment of those options; and

engage diferent stakholders into the debate and information should

be provided on how their opinions were taken on board.

Which conditions are required for RIAs to be successful?

During the debates the following key issues were identiied to trigger

improvement of the use made of RIAs:

•

A genuine engagement of all stakeholders (political leaders, public

oicals, civil society etc.) in order to ensure the quality of RIAs and

increase their use in the public debate;

An assessment of the information needed to perform meaninful RIAs

such as for example statistics and data;

RIAs and their impact need to be more closely monitored and

evaluated: instances responsible for this critical review need to be set

up and their staf well trained.

At the end of the sysmposium Danièle Lamarque, ECA Member, made the

following concluding remarks:

•

We all agree that we should not try to deine what RIAs should be.

Instead, we recognise the diversity of RIAs used in diferent cultures

and organizations;

RIAs are being implemented everywhere as part of a dynamic

ongoing process which is in development;

The interaction between researchers and decision makers is

necessary and brings added value;

Finally, RIAs contributes to a basic right of citizens to understand

the law that his/her representative is voting. If we are not capable

explaining a law, why then is it needed?

EUU, Alm.del - 2017-18 - Bilag 233: Rapport fra den Europæiske Revisionsret december 2017

Regulatory Impact Analysis discussed at the ECA

continued

Additional information

The symposium has been organised around contributions received in

response to an open call for papers. The selected contributions were

presented during the sysmposium, followed by round table discussions.

All papers and presentations are published on a dedicated website which

counted so far around 2000 visitors:

https://www.eca.europa.eu/sites/regulatory-impact-analysis-conference/

EN/Pages/Documentation.aspx

The symposium was also webstreamed and broadcasted in some

universities across Europe. Recordings are available on the following

address:

http://c.connectedviews.com/01/eca

EUU, Alm.del - 2017-18 - Bilag 233: Rapport fra den Europæiske Revisionsret december 2017

Reaching out

Visiting the United Nations in New York:

exchanging food for thought

By Kristina Maksinen, Directorate External action, security and justice

Kristina Maksinen in front of the sculpture 'Non-Violence' at the UN in New York City

Mission: knowledge sharing

As a performance auditor in the Chamber

External action, security and

justice

I am mainly involved in auditing development aid, humanitarian

aid, Common Foreign and Security Policy and assistance to the EU

neighbourhood. Against this background my wish was to broaden my

knowledge of audit methodology while keeping a focus on EU external

actions. What could be better than a study visit to the United Nations in

New York?

When auditing external actions, the United Nations and its agencies are

an important part of the audit landscape that we regularly encounter,

being a key implementing partner for EU funding outside the Union. My

visit to New York on 16-20 October 2017 had a very diferent purpose

than the usual audit mission: it was to familiarise myself more closely with

audit and evaluation procedures and methods at UN organisations and

engage in an exchange of views on methodology. In addition, as part

of the process, I had the opportunity to explore further the important

relationship between the European Union and the United Nations,

governed primarily by the Financial and Administrative Framework

Agreement, the so-called FAFA. In that context, I attended the annual FAFA

meeting in Rome last September, in part as preparation of my study visit.

As one of the recipients

of the ECA Performance

Recognition Award in

2016 Kristina Maksinen

chose to take the training

credit awarded for

personal and professional

development in the form

of a short placement at an

international organisation.

She went to the United

Nations, sharing with us

the rewarding knowledge

exchange she experienced.

EUU, Alm.del - 2017-18 - Bilag 233: Rapport fra den Europæiske Revisionsret december 2017

Visiting the United Nations in New York: exchanging food for thought

continued

Desired: roadmap to auditing in the UN

During my week in New York, I was hosted by the Oice of Programme

Planning, Budget and Accounts

, under the generous hospitality of the

Assistant-Secretary General and UN Controller, Bettina Tucci Bartsiotas.

With that as a starting point my visit covered meetings with a number of

audit departments within the UN family: the United Nations Development

Programme (UNDP), the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the

United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA). Meetings also took place with

the UN Oice of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS), where I had the chance

to exchange ideas and further explore the work of the Internal Audit

Department and the Inspection and Evaluation Department respectively.

I also met with representatives of the UN Board of Auditors, the UN’s

external audit body

. To close the circle, I was introduced to the work of the

Independent Audit Advisory Committee, a body of independent members,

assisting the General Assembly in fulilling its oversight responsibilities by

advising on the efectiveness, eiciency, and impact of the work of OIOS.

Beyond the UN my visit was supported by the EU Delegation to the UN who

also shared their experiences on UN oversight from an EU perspective. This

also led to a meeting with the United States Mission to the United Nations,

which the EU Delegation kindly arranged. As part of the information

sharing I was given the loor to present the ECA’s audit approach with a

focus on performance audit. I did this through the examples of two audits

of the Chamber I work in; the recently published: ‘Union Civil Protection

Mechanism: the coordination of responses to disasters outside the

Union has been broadly efective,’

and the ongoing audit on EU Election

Observation Missions

on which I shared methodology insights but not yet

audit results.

All of these meetings opened for an exchange regarding the similarities

and diferences between our audit approaches. While UN bodies do carry

out audits covering elements of performance, these are not necessarily

separate performance audits similar to ours. While diferent in their context

and purpose, I found the most striking similarities between our performance

audit methodology and that of the OIOS Inspection and Evaluation

Department which focuses on assessing the relevance, efectiveness, impact

and eiciency of UN programmes.

Food for thought: comparing performance

One of the questions put to me was whether the ECA uses standardised

wordings in the title of performance audit reports and if those results are

aggregated. While I explained that the choice of wording (partially

efective/

broadly efective/on track,

etc.) is at the discretion of the Members and

decided on a case-by-case basis, it did lead me to relect on the potential

beneits and disadvantages that may come with a standardised wording/

1 OPPBA falls under the UN Department of Management

2 The Board has a rotating governance of three members at a time over a period of six

years with the Auditor Generals of Tanzania, India and Germany currently in charge.

3 Special Report 33/16:

https://www.eca.europa.eu/en/Pages/DocItem.aspx?did=40303

4 Published on 13 December 2017 as Special Report 22/2017: “Election Observation Missions:

eforts made to follow up recommendations but better monitoring needed”

EUU, Alm.del - 2017-18 - Bilag 233: Rapport fra den Europæiske Revisionsret december 2017

Visiting the United Nations in New York: exchanging food for thought

continued

opinion measuring performance at the ECA. Would such an approach be

feasible? And if so, how would this link to discussions on whether or not the

ECA could provide an overall opinion on performance in a given policy area?

The UN structure is complex and I am still struggling to get my head around

the very complicated UN organigram with its diferent bodies, their various

interrelationships and, not least; the numerous abbreviations. Nevertheless,

with the help of meetings with many inspiring men and women at the UN, I

left with a much greater understanding of UN oversight. Following the visit,

my hope is to make use of my newly acquired knowledge in upcoming audits

and, where possible, also share my experience with colleagues in the context

of the ECA’s wider Knowledge Management framework.

United Nations (UN) building, New York City

EUU, Alm.del - 2017-18 - Bilag 233: Rapport fra den Europæiske Revisionsret december 2017

Reaching out

The ECA at the UN Climate Change Conference COP 23 in Bonn

By Olivier Prigent, Directorate Sustainable use of natural resources, and Katharina Bryan, Private Oice of

Phil Wynn Owen, ECA Member

Advancing the Paris Climate Change agreement

22 000 participants from more than 190 countries were debating

climate change issues at the COP 23 between 6 and 17 November

2017. Attending this event was deinitely a highlight for us this year.

Our presentation was part of the numerous side-events which took

place alongside the oicial negotiations. In Bonn, we were greeted by

the words “Bula” – Hello in Fidji – painted on walls. Indeed, the COP

23 was held by the Fiji part of the Small Island Developing Countries,

which face some of the most devastating consequences of climate

change.

The objectives of COP 23 were to advance the implementation

guidelines for the Paris agreement and prepare for more ambitious

action. Under the Paris agreement, in force since November 2016,

governments agreed to keep the rise in global average temperature

this century to “well below” 2°C above pre-industrial levels, aiming to

limit it to 1.5°C. Contributions submitted so far by the parties, will not

be suicient to achieve this target. In its Emissions Gap Report of 2016,

the United Nations Environment Programme estimates that we are on

track for global warming of up to 3.4°, based on current commitments.

The 23rd United Nations Climate

Change Conference, COP23

took place in Bonn, Germany,

between 6 and 17 November

2017. The ECA ran a side-event

to present the its audit work in

the area of energy and climate

change, focusing on its recent

Landscape Review on EU Action

on Energy and Climate Change.

Olivier Prigent and Katharina

Bryan report on this event.

1 Conference of the Parties : The supreme

decision-making body of the United

Nations Framework Convention on Climate

Change (UNFCCC). All States that are

parties to the Convention are represented

at the COP, at which they review the

implementation of the Convention and

any other legal instruments that the COP

adopts and take decisions necessary to

promote efective implementation. The EU

and its Member States are both parties to

the Convention, and take part in meetings

of the COP.

EUU, Alm.del - 2017-18 - Bilag 233: Rapport fra den Europæiske Revisionsret december 2017

The ECA at the UN Climate Change Conference COP 23 in Bonn

continued

Main outcomes of the conference

In Bonn, a process was agreed to prepare the next round of submissions of contributions,

starting at the beginning of 2018 approach to being inclusive, transparent and participatory

discussions, this so-called Talanoa dialogue, will be structured around three questions –

“Where are we? Where do we want to go? How do we get there?”.

Negotiations also centred on developing the Paris “rulebook” which should establish the

more technical rules and processes needed to fulil the Paris Agreement’s, for example how

countries measure and report their greenhouse gases and monitor compliance. Already 180

pages have been written. The parties plan to inalise the negotiation on this rule book during

COP24, which will be held from 3 to 14 December 2018 in Katowice, Poland.

Other outcomes of the COP included: an action plan on agriculture, which emits 20%

of global greenhouse gases emissions and is particularly exposed to climate change

consequences; a platform for local communities and indigenous populations, to enable

these communities to exchange best practices; and a decision on oceans, which store 3 to 6

times more carbon than forests.

ECA work in the area of energy and climate change

The ECA’s presentation was hosted in the European Commission’s pavilion. It was attended

by around 30 interested participants, including academics and NGOs. ECA Member Phil

Wynn Owen, reporting Member for the ECA Landscape Review on EU action on Energy and

Climate Change, opened the presentation. In their presentation of the Landscape Review

Olivier Prigent, Head of Task, and Katharina Bryan, co-author and attaché, gave examples

of what Supreme Audit Institutions had found in energy and climate change and the seven

main challenges in the area. Phil Wynn Owen presented other ECA work in the area of energy

and climate change. The question and answer session, which was moderated by the ECA

Spokesperson Mark Rogerson, showed considerable interest in the work of the ECA. During

the discussion participants raised several issues which the ECA should consider addressing

in its future work.

This is the second time that the ECA is present at the COP meetings. Already in 2012 at the

Doha Climate Change Conference, ECA Member Kevin Cardif presented the work done in

relation to the EUROSAI (European Organisation of Supreme Audit Institutions) Working

Group on Environmental Audit’s co-ordinated audit on adaptation to climate change.

The ECA Landscape Review on EU action on Energy and Climate Change, published on

19 September and already featured in the November 2017 edition of the ECA Journal, it

provides an overview of EU action on energy and climate change; summarises key audit

work from 269 audit reports by the European Court of Auditors and EU national audit

institutions; and it identiies seven main challenges in order to inform both the legislative

debate and future audit work.

For more information on the Landscape Review:

http://www.eca.europa.eu/en/Pages/DocItem.aspx?did=41824

EUU, Alm.del - 2017-18 - Bilag 233: Rapport fra den Europæiske Revisionsret december 2017

Reaching out

Deputy Comptroller General of Colombia visits the ECA

By Roberto Gabella Carena, Directorate of the Presidency

Outside Europe there is often interest in how public audit in the European

Union and its Member States is organised. Roberto Gabella Carena reports on

a visit from the Deputy Comptroller General of the Supreme Audit Institution

of Colombia.

From left to right:

Martin Weber, Gloria Alonso Másmela,

Gerry Madden and Philippe Froidure

On 14 November 2017 Gloria Amparo Alonso Másmela, Vice Contralora General de

la República de Colombia (Deputy Comptroller General of the Republic of Colombia)

visited the ECA. She was received by Philippe Froidure, Director of Chamber External

action, security and justice, Martin Weber, Director of the Presidency, and Gerry

Madden, Head of the Private Oice of Karel Pinxten, ECA Member.

Gloria Alonso Másmela came to visit the ECA to learn about the speciic challenges of

auditing EU funds, to share her experience from a Latin American institution which

is making eforts to modernize and strengthen its capacities, and to discuss possible

cooperation in the ield of audit (such as exchanges of experiences, capacity building,

etc.) between Columbia and the EU. She explained the situation in Colombia as a

federal state with a signiicant degree of autonomy also for major municipalities and

its consequences for the organisation of the work of the Oice of the Comptroller

General. Her oice is embarking on a reform process to shift from mainly ex-ante

controls to mostly ex-post controls and an increased focus on performance issues.

There are also relections on-going on how to better coordinate the work of the

diferent actors in public audit in Columbia.

During the meeting the ECA representatives provided some background information

on the ECA’s cooperation with the Supreme Audit Institutions (SAIs) in the Member

States, including the coordination and cooperation on audits; the activities of the

Contact Committee of European union SAIs; the ECA’s role in the ield of ighting

fraud and speciic initiatives of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and

Development (OECD) to strengthen public governance.

EUU, Alm.del - 2017-18 - Bilag 233: Rapport fra den Europæiske Revisionsret december 2017

FOCUS

Publications in November 2017

Special report

N° 15/2017

Ex ante conditionalities and performance

reserve in Cohesion: innovative but not yet

efective instruments

The legislative package for the 2014-2020 programme period introduced two

instruments to make Cohesion spending more results oriented: ex-ante conditionalities

and the performance reserve. While the former speciies certain conditions that must

be fulilled before the programme implementation, the latter requires most ESIF

programmes to set aside 6 % of the total funding to each Member State which will be

deinitively allocated subject to the outcome of a performance review in 2019. In this

report we examined whether these two instruments were efectively used to incentivise

better Cohesion spending by Member States.

We found that the ex-ante conditionalities provided a consistent framework for

assessing the Member States’ readiness to implement EU funds. However, their

assessment was a lengthy and time-consuming process and it remains uncertain

to what extent they have and will efectively lead to changes on the ground. The

maintenance of the ex-ante conditionalities depends on the commitment and

ownership by the Member States. We also consider that the performance framework

and reserve provide little incentive for a better result orientation of the OPs since they

are mostly based on spending and outputs

Click here for our full Special Report

Published on

23 November 2017

Special report

N° 16/2017

Rural Development Programming: less

complexity and more focus on results needed

The EU plans to spend on rural development policy nearly 100 billion euro for the

period 2014-2020 through the European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development

(EAFRD). An objective of the EU strategic framework for 2014-2020 was to focus more

on results. However, eforts to achieve this faced the perennial problem of planning

for a new programming period starting before relevant data are available as regards

spending and results from the previous period.

We found that the approved RDPs are long and complex documents with shortcomings

that limit the potential to enhance the focus on performance and results. Signiicant

administrative efort on the part of national authorities was needed to meet the

extensive content requirements. We also found that despite Commission’s eforts, RDPs’

implementation started late and the planned spending began more slowly than in the

previous period.

Click here for our full Special Report

Published on

14 November 2017

EUU, Alm.del - 2017-18 - Bilag 233: Rapport fra den Europæiske Revisionsret december 2017

FOCUS

Publications in November 2017

Special report

N° 17/2017

The Commission´s intervention in the

Greek inancial crisis

We examined the European Commission’s management of the three Economic

Adjustment Programmes for Greece, bearing in mind the institutional set-up of the

diferent inancial assistance instruments used. In relation to the ongoing programme,

the audit focused only on the design aspects. Funding for the irst programme (GLF), in

2010, was 110 billion euros; for the second (EFSF; 2012) it was 172.6 billion euros and

for the third (ESM; 2015) it was 86 billion euros. As of mid-2017, Greece still requires

external inancial support and we found that the objectives of the programmes were

met only to a limited extent.

Click here for our full Special Report

Published on

16 November 2017

Special report

N° 18/2017

Single European Sky: a changed culture but

not a single sky

We reviewed selected key components of the Single European Sky (SES) initiative, which

aims at improving the overall performance of Air Traic Management (ATM). Overall,

we conclude that the initiative addressed a clear need and has led to a greater culture

of eiciency in ATM. However, European airspace management remains fragmented

and the SES as a concept has not yet been achieved. Navigation charges have not been

substantially reduced and ATM-related delays have started to increase again.

The SES’s technological pillar, the SESAR project, promoted coordination and is gradually

releasing technological improvements, but has fallen behind its initial schedule and has

become signiicantly more costly than anticipated. In substance, the EU’s intervention

in SESAR has evolved from one with a target deadline for achievement to a more open-

ended commitment.

Click here for our full Special Report

Published on

30 November 2017

EUU, Alm.del - 2017-18 - Bilag 233: Rapport fra den Europæiske Revisionsret december 2017

FOCUS

Publications in November 2017

EU agencies audit

2016 audit of EU agencies in brief

The European Court of Auditors is the EU’s independent audit institution — guardians

of the EU’s inances. This publication provides a summary of the main indings and

conclusions from the ECA’s 2016 annual audits of the European agencies. It covers the

reliability of the agencies’ accounts, the regularity of income and spending and also

some aspects of agencies’ performance. The full texts of the reports are available on

www.eca.europa.eu and in the Oicial Journal of the European Union.

Published on

15 November 2017

Click here for our report

EU Joint

Undertakings

The EU’s research Joint Undertakings: “Clean

accounts, and transactions mostly compliant

with the rules”

The European Court of Auditors has issued unqualiied (“clean”) audit opinions on the

accounts of the European Union’s eight Joint Undertakings in the area of research, and

signed them of as reliable. The auditors have also issued clean audit opinions on the

inancial transactions for seven of the undertakings, which complied with the relevant

rules, and a qualiied opinion for one.

Click here for our report

Published on

15 November 2017

Audit Brief

Audit brief: Passenger rights in the EU

The European Union (EU) is the only area in the world with a set of rules designed to

ensure a minimum level of protection for passengers in the main modes of transport (air,

rail, waterborne and bus/coach). Passenger rights are one of the lagship policies that the

EU delivers directly to its citizens.

A number of problems have become apparent since the adoption of current legislation

on passenger rights. There are inconsistencies, grey zones and gaps in legislation,

passengers are insuiciently aware of their rights, and these rights may not be

interpreted and enforced uniformly within the Union.

Our auditors will examine what action the Commission has taken to monitor and enforce

the EU’s passenger rights policy. We will also visit ten Member States (the Czech Republic,

France, Finland, Greece, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland and Spain) to

meet oicials and relevant stakeholders and assess implementation on the ground.

Click here for audit brief

Published on

28 November 2017

EUU, Alm.del - 2017-18 - Bilag 233: Rapport fra den Europæiske Revisionsret december 2017

ISSN 1831-449X

EDITION HIGHLIGHTS

THE ECA ANNUAL REPORT: STRIVING TO

MAKE IT MORE INTERESTING YEAR ON YEAR

THE MAKING OF… A LOOK BEHIND THE

SCENES OF THE ANNUAL REPORT

AUDITING RESULTS TO PROVIDE GUIDANCE

FOR EU EFFORTS IN THE FUTURE

ENHANCING THE IMPACT OF OUR ANNUAL

REPORT

LANGUAGE IS ALL WE HAVE – SOME

THOUGHTS AFTER THE FIRST ECA CLEAR

LANGUAGE AWARDS

Cover:

Presention of the ECA Annual Report at the European Parliament on 28/9/2017:

From left to right: Ingeborg Grässle, Chair of the Committee on Budgetary Control, MEP;

Klaus-Heiner Lehne, ECA President; Lazaros S. Lazarou, ECA Member

QJ-AD-17-011-2A-N