Council must clarify how it spends its money

In this discharge procedure, the Council refused to shed light on its spending of over €530m during the financial year 2012. It continues to neglect the Parliament's questions and refuses to attend the hearings held by the Budgetary Control Committee on the Council's financial management.

Hungarian MEP Tamás Deutsch stressed that an effective budgetary control exercise requires perfect cooperation between the Parliament and the Council, a view also supported by the European Commission. He suggested not granting the discharge until the Council accepts the Parliament's right to fully exercise its powers.

"The Parliament and the Council could make progress by setting up an agreement with a list of documents to be provided by the latter in order to fulfil their respective roles in the discharge procedure. This could change the current situation and lead to the start of a dialogue on this matter between the Institutions, which would certainly be a positive sign for the citizens of the European Union", said Deutsch after today's vote.

Petri Sarvamaa MEP, the EP Rapporteur for the Agencies discharge 2012, welcomed the vote in the Budgetary Control Committee which approved his Report today and granted discharge to the European telecoms regulator BEREC.

"The decision shows the value of Parliament’s discharge procedure in practice", said Sarvamaa. "We postponed BEREC's discharge earlier this year so as to make further investigations. Now we can see that the office has improved its budgetary planning and monitoring of payments. But there is still work to be done and the Budgetary Control Committee will follow it closely", assured Sarvamaa.