3. The environmental verifier shall take into account objective evidence that a system is effective, including the existence of procedures within the organisation that are proportionate to the size and complexity of the operation, the nature of the associated environmental impacts and the competence of the operators.

This is despite the fact that the only piece of information that we have, namely the report by the internal auditor, says that there is a B account, an off-budget account at the Council.

an annual audit by independent auditors of the paying agencies' accounts, based on their available supporting documents; this was intended to confirm that the revenue and the expenditure of a single financial year had been entered correctly, completely and reliably in the accounts.

18. Recalls that monitoring and evaluation are basic and recurrent tasks of public administrations and that their systematic externalisation is incomprehensible and undesirable; stresses that, where the European Institutions feel that evaluations carried out by national and Community administrations, as well as by internal and external auditors, need to be supplemented by an external evaluation, the evaluation body must be selected on the basis of its skills and of its independence vis-à-vis the programme or the actions being evaluated; calls upon the Commission, therefore, to phase out any "framework" contract concluded with ...[+++] external bodies for the evaluation of the current programmes and to refrain from hiring any external body on a repeated basis for the purpose of evaluation; urges the Commission and the Member States, therefore, to refrain from hiring, for evaluation purposes, any external body that has had a previous contractual relationship with the Commission for the designing, monitoring or evaluating of actions or measures involved in these programmes;

18. Recalls that monitoring and evaluation are basic and recurrent tasks of public administrations and that their systematic externalisation is incomprehensible and undesirable; stresses that, where the European Institutions feel that evaluations carried out by national and Community administrations, as well as by internal and external auditors, need to be supplemented by an external evaluation, the evaluation body must be selected on the basis of its skills and of its independence vis-à-vis the programme or the actions being evaluated; calls upon the Commission, therefore, to phase out any "framework" contract concluded with ...[+++] external bodies for the evaluation of the current programmes and to refrain from hiring any external body on a repeated basis for the purpose of evaluation; urges the Commission and the Member States, therefore, to refrain from hiring, for evaluation purposes, any external body that has had a previous contractual relationship with the Commission for the designing, monitoring or evaluating of actions or measures involved in these programmes;

Stresses that, where the European Institutions feel that evaluations carried out by national and Community administrations, as well as by internal and external auditors, need to be supplemented by an external evaluation, the evaluation body must be selected on the basis of its skills and of its independence vis-à-vis the programme or the actions being evaluated.