What changed between the draft committee report and the plenary report

Changed:3. Notes that the overall implementation rate of the Centre’s work programme for 2022 was 89,6 % based onaccording theto amending budget 1/2022; regrets that that rate is lower than in 2021 (93,4 %), therefore ending a positive trend of year-on-year improvements since 2018 when the implementation rate was 82,4 %;

Changed:9. ObservesNotes that the Centre for takingtook a significant step towards sustainability and environmental protection by signing a new lease contract and reducing its office space by 33 %, while establishing new working spaces, including a cafeteria;

Added:11. Welcomes that the Administration Department of the Centre has improved its performance by reviewing and revising working methods, while introducing new technology to streamline its operations, which has resulted in increased productivity, reduced costs, and overall improvement of the quality of the work;

Changed:12.13. Notes with appreciation from the Court’s report that the Centre is among thethose agencies that have corporate plans to improve the energy efficiency and climate neutrality of their operations; regrets that the Centre is not yet in possession of an Eco-Management and Audit Scheme (EMAS) certificate, but welcomes that it is actively studying the possibility of starting the EMAS registration procedure in the near future; notes that the Centre is committed to continuously improving its environmental performance and relies on the general principles of EMAS and the ISO 14001 in its daily practices; welcomes the Centre’s measures to reduce gas and electricity consumption at the Centre’s premises for the period 1 November 2022 to 31 March 2023;

Changed:13.14. Notes that, on 31 December 2022, the establishment plan was 93,78 % implemented, with 46 officials and 135 temporary agents appointed out of 51 officials and 142 temporary agents authorised under the Union budget (193 authorised posts, same as in 2021); notes that, in addition, 20 contract agents worked for the Centre in 2022;

Changed:14.15. Notes the Centre’s gender breakdown reported for 2022, with 8 women (42 %) and 11 men (58 %) in senior and middle management positions, with 38 men (59 %) and 26 women (41 %) at MBmanagement board level and overall staff with 76 men (38 %) and 125 women (62 %); observes that there is an underrepresentation of men in the Centre’s overall staff; recalls the importance to ensure gender balance and asks the Centre to work towards gender balance at the staffstaff, senior and middle management level and at MBmanagement board level; asks the Commission and the Member States to take into account the importance of ensuring gender balance when nominating their members to the Centre’s management board; notes the high number of MBmanagement board members, which does not facilitate decision-making and simplified management;

Changed:18.19. Notes with concern the Court’s qualified opinion according to which payments amounting to EUR 0,1 million were irregular asalong werewith the two contracts of EUR 110 000 and EUR 52 000, towith which those payments were associated and which the Centre chose to negotiate with a single provider without the prior publication of a contract notice,notice; notes that despite the Centre having justified its choice of procedure byon the grounds of extreme urgency, whereas the Centre’s justification has been found insufficient by the Court; further notes furthermore the Centre’s reply that the Centreit chose to procure an extension of the service through a negotiated procedure because no solution to bridgetransition betweenfrom the old andto the new framework contract (FWC) was found;

Changed:19.20. Highlights furtherfurthermore the Court’s qualified opinion on the legality and regularity of payments made in 2022 in connection with 117 separate FWCframework contracts stemming from a single procedure relating to the translation of texts; notes from the Court’s report that the global ceiling for that procedure, which was EUR 1 million, was not stipulated in the associated FWC;framework contracts; regrets that this finding was in breach of Article 2(31) of the Financial Regulation; notes moreover that the Centre did not monitor the consumption of that global ceiling either at the level of the individual FWCframework contract or for the whole procedure, but only followed the related spending at the level of the budget line concerned; regrets that this led to an amount of EUR 0,5 million being irregularly paid in excess of that ceiling; notes from the Centre’s reply the actions taken by the Centre to improve the Centre’s controls systems in this area, namely the development of a BusinessObjectsBusiness Objects report which lists all framework contracts in force and includes all the necessary details to follow the consumption of the ceiling of each one of those contracts; welcomes in this context the development of technical features that automatically detect, highlight and/or send warning emails when various budget consumption rates are reached (75 % and 90 %);

Changed:20.21. ObservesNotes that the CVs of the MBmanagement board members are not published on the Centre’s website, while the declarations of interests of a majority of those members are uploaded thereon; notes that the Director’s declaration of interests and CV are published on the Centre’s website; notes from the Centre's report on the measures taken by the Centre in light of the discharge in respect of the implementation of the budget of the Centre for the financial year 2021, that the Centre is still working on the solution that will allow the MB’smanagement board’s members to upload and maintain the declaration of interests and CVs by themselves; urges the Centre to finalise this technical step and calls on the Centre to report to the discharge authority on the progress made in this matter until all documents of all board members are published;

Changed:21.22. Welcomes that declarations of interests are signed by the candidates and staff before being recruited, during employment and before returning from leave on personal grounds/unpaidgrounds or unpaid leave; welcomes further that the staff involved in selection committees for the recruitment of personnel or in evaluation committees for calls for tenders must fill in a declaration of confidentiality and absence of conflicts of interest; notes from the Centre’s reply that there were no cases of conflicts of interest or whistleblowing were in 2022;

Changed:24.25. Notes that at the beginning of 2022, the Centre had 5five open audit recommendations stemming from two Internal Audit Services (IAS) audits; acknowledges in this context that by the end of 2022, the two recommendations relating to the 2019 IAS audit on the Centre’s system for the management of the translation workflow and one of the three recommendations from the 2021 IAS audit on planning and budgeting were closed; notes further that for the two remaining recommendations, none of which marked as ‘very important’ or ‘critical’, actions have been addressed and the residual risk for these is minimal;