1. The authorising officer shall be responsible for implementing revenue and expenditure in accordance with the principles of sound financial management and for ensuring that the requirements of legality and regularity are complied with.
2. To implement expenditure, the authorising officer shall make budget commitments and legal commitments, shall validate expenditure and authorise payments and shall undertake the preliminaries for the implementation of appropriations.
3. Implementation of revenue shall comprise drawing up estimates of amounts receivable, establishing entitlements to be recovered and issuing recovery orders. It shall involve waiving established entitlements where appropriate.
4. The authorising officer shall put in place, in compliance with the minimum standards adopted by the Management Board on the basis of the standards laid down by the Commission for its own department and having due regard to the risks associated with the management environment and the nature of the action financed, the organisational structure and the internal management and control systems and procedures suited to the performance of his/her duties, including where appropriate ex post verifications. The authorising officer shall establish within his/her departments an expertise and advice function designed to help him/her control the risks involved in his/her activities.
5. Before an operation is authorised, the operational and financial aspects shall be verified by members of staff other than the one who initiated the operation. Initiation and the ex ante and ex post verification of an operation shall be separate functions.
6. The authorising officer shall conserve the supporting documents relating to operations carried out for a period of five years from the date of the decision granting discharge in respect of implementation of the budget.
Personal data contained in supporting documents shall be deleted where possible when those data are not necessary for budgetary discharge, control and audit purposes. In any event, as concerns the conservation of traffic data, the provisions of Article 37(2) of Regulation (EC) 45/2001 shall be observed.
1. Initiation of an operation as referred to in Article 38(5) shall be understood to mean all the operations which are preparatory to the adoption of the acts implementing the budget by the authorising officers responsible referred to in Articles 33 and 34.
2. Ex ante verification of an operation as referred to in Article 38(5) shall be understood to mean all the ex ante checks put in place by the authorising officer responsible in order to verify the operational and financial aspects.
3. Each operation shall be the subject of at least one ex ante verification. The purpose of this verification shall be to ascertain that:
(a)
the expenditure is in order and conforms to the relevant provisions;
(b)
the principle of sound financial management referred to in Article 25 has been applied.
For the purpose of ex ante verification, a series of similar individual transactions relating to routine expenditure on salaries, pensions, reimbursement of mission expenses and medical expenses may be considered by the authorising officer responsible to constitute a single operation.
In the case referred to in the second subparagraph, the authorising officer responsible shall, depending on his risk assessment, carry out an appropriate ex post verification, in accordance with paragraph 4.
4. The purpose of ex post verifications of documents and, where appropriate, on-the-spot verifications shall be to verify that operations financed by the budget have been correctly implemented and in particular that the criteria referred to in paragraph 3 have been complied with. These verifications may be organised on a sample basis using risk analysis.
5. The officials or other staff responsible for the verifications referred to in paragraphs 2 and 4 shall be different from those performing the tasks referred to in paragraph 1 and shall not be their subordinates.
6. All staff responsible for scrutinising the management of financial operations must have the necessary professional skills. They shall respect a specific code of professional standards adopted by Europol and based on standards laid down by the Commission for its own departments.
1. The authorising officer shall report to the Management Board on the performance of his/her duties in the form of an annual activity report, together with financial and management information confirming that the information contained in the report presents a true and fair view except as otherwise specified in any reservations related to defined areas of revenue and expenditure.
The annual activity report shall indicate the results of his/her operations by reference to the objectives set, the risks associated with these operations, the use made of the resources provided and the efficiency and effectiveness of the internal control system. The Europol internal audit function and the Commission’s internal auditor within the meaning of Article 71 shall take note of the annual activity report and any other pieces of information identified.
2. By no later than 15 June each year, the Management Board shall send the budgetary authority and the Court of Auditors an analysis and an assessment of the authorising officer’s report on the previous financial year. This analysis and assessment shall be included in the annual report of Europol, in accordance with the provisions of the constituent instruments. Where reporting under this Article concerns ‘Europol operational, strategic and classified information’, the authorising officer may provide for such information to be reported on separately to the Management Board, which shall be entitled to take the final decision regarding whether or not such information should be included in any published document.
Any member of staff involved in the financial management and control of transactions who considers that a decision he/she is required by his/her superior to apply or to agree to is irregular or contrary to the principles of sound financial management or the professional rules he/she is required to observe shall inform the Director in writing and, if the latter fails to take action within a reasonable period, the panel referred to in Article 47(4) and the Management Board. In the event of any illegal activity, fraud or corruption which may harm the interests of the Community, he/she shall inform the authorities and bodies designated by the applicable legislation.
Where powers of budget implementation are delegated or sub-delegated in accordance with Article 34, Article 38(1), (2) and (3) shall apply mutatis mutandis to the authorising officers by delegation or subdelegation.
Source: EUR-Lex (Publications Office of the EU), © European Union, reuse permitted under Commission Decision 2011/833/EU.
