The European Court of Auditors does not seem to be experiencing the problem arising from a shortage of translators, as in other EU institutions.
In this institution, which has four Maltese translators, Malta is in the best position among member countries.
Josef Bonnici, member of the European Court of Auditors and a former Cabinet member, said that when the selection of Maltese translators was made there were only a few translators and no one was assigned to the Auditors' Court as the translators were absorbed by other institutions.
He said the decision was taken so that in the case of Malta a separate recruitment would be made. This turned out to be a success because in a short time four translators, all belonging to the legal profession, were found for the court. Having four translators instead of one would make a big difference, he said.
Prof. Bonnici, who forms part of the court's structural and internal policies group, was speaking at a press conference at the Le Meridian Phoenicia, in Floriana yesterday on the annual report 2003 issued by the European Court of Auditors and on the role and workings of the court.
Malta is not featured in the 2003 report since it only became an EU member in May this year.
A fundamental role of the European Court of Auditors is to ensure transparency and accountability and to improve the management of EU funds for the benefit of all citizens.
According to the report, the court is of the opinion that the 2003 consolidated accounts of the European Communities faithfully reflect the revenue and expenditure and the financial situation of the European Communities at year's end except for one observation related to the recording of the operations concerning the sundry debtors.
The court noted that the modernisation of the accounting system, due to be operational for the 2005 financial year, still required considerable efforts before being ready for full implementation. In the case of agricultural expenditure, payments were materially affected by errors due to the shortcomings in the supervisory systems and controls.
According to the report the integrated administrative and control system, covering about 58 per cent of agricultural expenditure, is satisfactorily implemented, although the quality of the on-site inspections should be improved. With regard to structural measures, owing to weaknesses in the supervisory systems and controls at member state level, payments to beneficiaries were affected by the same type and frequency of errors as in previous years.
The Commission should require member states to make improvements in the system and use the possibility to suspend payments in cases of serious systems weaknesses.
The report said that for internal policies, the improvements made by the Commission in 2003 were not yet sufficient to avoid errors in payments to final beneficiaries, mainly due to over-declaration of costs.
Shortcomings were identified in the European Refugee Fund, in the field of freedom, security and justice and in the 6th Framework Programme for Research. Rules governing the research framework programmes should be revised.
Among other matters, the report refers to pre-accession strategy, saying that in spite of improvements noted, there were still shortcomings in the audits carried out by the Commission as well as in the internal control system in the candidate countries which result in errors and greater risks affecting legality and regularity in the 2003 payments.
The report said that action taken by the Commission on under spending resulted in the surplus of revenue over expenditure amounting to e5.5 billion. While still large in absolute terms, this represents a fall compared with 2002 (€7.4 billion) and 2001 (€15 billion).
The report notes that under-spending created a challenge for the EU's budgetary management through its effect on the increasing level of outstanding commitments - expenditure legally committed but not yet made. At the end of 2003, these outstanding commitments represented five years' worth of payments, which was worse than at the same point in the previous financial perspective period.
It added that it was contradictory to increase the budget each year when there was an inability to absorb resources within the timescale foreseen.