Commission held to account

Budget responsibility and annual activity reports

The European Commission is responsible under the EU's treaties for implementing the EU's budget. The Commission takes political responsibility for management of the budget, while operational implementation is the responsibility of directors-general and heads of service, who are designated as ‘authorising officers by delegation' (AODs).

AODs produce annual activity reports (AARs), which include a signed declaration of assurance on the legality and regularity of financial transactions. This assurance contains an assessment of the effectiveness of control.

AODs can enter reservations in their declarations in order to highlight problems. AARs are the principal mechanism allowing AODs to document their accountability to the college of commissioners. The synthesis report is a summary of the AARs – a tool by which the commissioners take responsibility for what is done with the power that has been delegated to Commission departments.

Error rates

An error rate of 2% or less is considered to be below the level of materiality.

An error rate of 2%-5% constitutes a material level of error.

An error rate of above 5% is considered “very serious” by the Court of Auditors.

Tolerable risk of error

In May 2002, the Commission published a communication entitled “More or less controls? Striking the balance between the administrative cost of controls and the risk of error”. It suggested a tolerable risk of error range for a number of policy areas of 2%-5%. But the figures and the approach used have not been endorsed by the European Court of Auditors.

Suspending payments

In 2010, the Commission interrupted payments worth a total of €2.6 billion.

Member states made €3.6bn worth of financial corrections to regional programmes in 2000-06 (including €1.7bn in recoveries and withdrawals of €1.9bn).