Ευρωπαίος Διαμεσολαβητής

Summary of decision on own-initiative inquiry OI/5/2007/GG against the European Commission

Since the early days of his office, the Ombudsman has taken a close look at the timeliness of payments made by the Commission. In his decision on an own-initiative inquiry in 2001, the Ombudsman concluded that the Commission had taken steps to tackle the problem which appeared to be satisfactory. He added, however, that he would consider opening a new own-initiative inquiry if late payment were to continue to pose serious problems.

In 2007, the Ombudsman noted that, since closing the above inquiry in 2001, he had had to deal with a number of cases from which it appeared that problems persisted in this area. For example, he had received two consecutive complaints about late payment from a German citizen who regularly worked for the Commission as an expert. The Ombudsman therefore launched a new own-initiative inquiry.

In its opinion, the Commission pointed out that it had improved its performance in the years 2005 to 2007 and that it had taken a number of steps to avoid late payments. At the administrative level, compliance with time-limits for payment had been defined as a performance indicator for its staff; internal monitoring had been put in place; and the process of examining requests for payment had been simplified. At the legislative level, new rules had been introduced which, inter alia, facilitated the use of lump sums, rendered payment of interest automatic and introduced an annual report to Parliament on compliance with payment time-limits. As a result of these measures, the Commission expected the positive trend to continue.

The Ombudsman noted that there indeed appeared to be certain positive trends. However, he also noted that, in 2007, delays still occurred in more than one out of five cases, and that the average delay amounted to 47.98 days. Furthermore, delays seemed to be a particular problem where small amounts were concerned, thus probably mainly affecting individual citizens or small and medium-sized undertakings, beneficiaries, that is, who are most in need of being protected against the negative consequences of payment delays.

Whereas the present situation was therefore clearly unacceptable, the Ombudsman was pleased to note that the Commission appeared to have understood the seriousness of the situation. The measures to which it had referred were clearly useful and likely to lead to improvements.

Given that many of these measures were comparatively recent, the Ombudsman considered that it was too early to assess their impact. He therefore decided to close his inquiry and to open a new one in early 2009, when figures for the Commission's performance in 2008 would be available.