Changes from report parliamentary committee draft to plenary report

36. Recalls that the Committee adopted Regulation n⁰ 6/2023 of 4 July 2023 laying down transparency measures that focus on office-holding members and rapporteurs; commends in this context the Committee for having formally joined the EU Transparency Register on 1 January 2024;

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Removed30. Welcomes the Committee’s renewed efforts in the area of detection and prevention of conflicts of interest in 2023; notes that thanks to its Decision n⁰157/2023, the Committee defined the concept of conflicts of interest and has put in place a mechanism to detect and prevent it whereby staff are required to declare whether they might have a conflict of interest (potential or possible), by filling in a form at various key moments of their career or professional activities; notes with satisfaction from the Questionnaire that the annual information regarding the occupation activities of former senior officials is published in a transparent way on the Committee’s website; notes that the Committee did not detect any situations of conflicts of interest, which would have required follow-up by the administration in 2023;

Added37. Urges the Committee to enhance the detection and prevention of conflicts of interest by introducing a mandatory cooling-off period for outgoing members before they can engage in lobbying or advisory roles involving Union institutions; calls for the proactive publication of all recusal decisions taken by Committee members due to conflicts of interest;

Removed31. Notes that no cases of whistleblowing were reported to the Committee in 2023, except for information received from OLAF about a whistleblowing case against a staff member of the Committee, which was eventually dismissed by OLAF; notes that the Committee did not adopt any new measures concerning whistleblowing in 2023 and continued to rely on the measures in place since 2015 and to promote them through ethics training;

Added38. Welcomes the Committee’s renewed efforts in the area of detection and prevention of conflicts of interest in 2023; notes that thanks to its Decision n⁰157/2023, the Committee defined the concept of conflicts of interest and has put in place a mechanism to detect and prevent it whereby staff are required to declare whether they might have a conflict of interest (potential or possible), by filling in a form at various key moments of their career or professional activities; notes with satisfaction from the Questionnaire that the annual information regarding the occupation activities of former senior officials is published in a transparent way on the Committee’s website; notes that the Committee did not detect any situations of conflicts of interest which would have required follow-up by the administration in 2023;

Removed32. Notes that the Committee has had in place a range of anti-fraud measures and actions applicable to its members and its staff which are implemented by different services; notes with satisfaction from the Questionnaire the Committee’s commitment to further strengthen the existing anti-fraud measures by adopting an anti-fraud strategy in 2025; asks the Committee to keep the discharge authority informed on this matter;

Added39. Notes that no cases of whistleblowing were reported to the Committee in 2023, except for information received from OLAF about a whistleblowing case against a staff member of the Committee, which was eventually dismissed by OLAF; notes that the Committee did not adopt any new measures concerning whistleblowing in 2023 and continued to rely on the measures in place since 2015 and to promote them through ethics training and awareness raising; supports regular mandatory ethic trainings both for staff as well as for management level;

Added40. Notes that the Committee has had in place a range of anti-fraud measures and actions applicable to its members and its staff which are implemented by different services; observes that no anti-fraud strategy was in place in 2023 despite Parliament’s requests in previous discharge resolutions; notes with satisfaction, following Parliament’s recommendation, and as indicated in the Questionnaire, the Committee’s commitment to further strengthen the existing anti-fraud measures by adopting an anti-fraud strategy in 2025; encourages the Committee to facilitate regular and compulsory anti-fraud trainings as part of the strategy; asks the Committee to keep the discharge authority informed on this matter;

Digitalisation, cybersecurity and data protection

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Changed33.41. Notes that the combined IT budget of the Committee and the EESC was EUR 12,7 million in 2023, compared to EUR 11,712 million in 2022, i.e., aan increase of 8,40 %, whereas EUR 350 000 of that budget was paid for cybersecurity in 2023;

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Changed34.42. Welcomes the Committee’s new ‘Digital Strategy 2024-2026’ adopted at the end of 2023; commends in this context the Committee for its digitalisation progress made in 2023 in different areas such as the administrative processes (including staff selection), procurement and interpretation, among others; calls on the Committee to accelerate digital transformation efforts by ensuring the full implementation of electronic workflows, e-signatures, and digital case management tools by 2026, reducing paper-based processes in line with sustainability commitments, shifting towards a more paperless administration;

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Changed35.43. Notes with satisfaction that 90 % of the projects for simplification through digitalisation under the ‘Going for impact’ initiative were fully implemented by the end of 2023; notes in addition that further efficiencies were tapped due to an IT project to define the best tool for the electronic management of form-based workflows with, as a result, many of the Committee’s processes having begun to be simplified and digitalised through Microsoft 365 tools; notes with satisfaction that the Committee uses procurement modules such as e-Tendering, e-Notices, e-Submission, MyWorkplace, as well as the qualified electronic signature, for the signature of contracts, introduced in 2023; welcomes the adoption by the Committee of internal guidelines on use of artificial intelligence laying the ground for possible future solutions;solutions and encourages introduction of regular mandatory trainings on safe use of artificial intelligence;

44. Notes further that the European Data Protection Supervisor (‘EDPS’) did not conduct any investigation or enquiry into the processing of personal data by the Committee in 2023; notes that in 2023 the EDPS launched a general questionnaire on the designation and position of the data protection officer (DPO), which was answered by the Committee’s DPO;

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Changed37.45. Notes that the Committee did not encounter any cyber-attacks in 2023, other than certain denial of service attacks against the Committee’s externally hosted website; notes from the Questionnaire of the Committee’s tools and strategies for real-time threat monitoring and identifying vulnerabilities in the Committee’s systems; commends the Committee for adhering to standards in matters related to cybersecurity-related risk assessments, as well as for having put in place a system based on incident response plans, recovery measures and lessons learned; notes with satisfaction that the Committee and the EESC adopted the NIST Cybersecurity Framework with focus, in 2023, on the principles: ‘protect’ and ‘detect’; encourages the Committee to raise the cybersecurity awareness of their members and staff, to carry out regular risk assessments of its IT infrastructure and to ensure regular audits and tests of its cyber defences;

▸6 unchanged paragraphs

Buildings

46. Notes that the Committee’s budget (current year appropriations) in 2023 was EUR 18,594 million (compared to EUR 18,930 million in 2022) with a payment execution rate of 93,70 % (compared to 82,60 % in 2022); notes with satisfaction that, as result of exchanging the B68 and TRE74 buildings for the VMA building in 2022, savings were achieved due to lower costs of renting the entire VMA in 2023;

47. Notes that renovation works of the VMA (third to ninth floor) continued in 2023; notes further a low payment execution rate with regard to the C8 appropriations (carried over from 2022 to 2023), i.e., 18,90 %, used for the fitting-out of the VMA premises; understands the Committee’s explanation for that low rate whereas the contractor was not able to finish parts of the renovation works in the VMA buildings; reiterates its call to the Committee to provide the discharge authority with an update on the return on investment in relation to the smart technologies installed in the VMA;

48. Welcomes the commitment of the Committee and the EESC to apply systematically the ‘design for all’ principle to their infrastructure, ensuring accessibility of their building by design; notes that the Committees took a range of different measures to ensure accessibility of their buildings to people with various kinds of disabilities (wheelchair users, blind and visually impaired people, deaf persons, elderly people with muscular or vascular problems);

Environment and sustainability

49. Notes that the Committee continued to implement a variety of green practices in 2023, such as the use of innovative energy-efficient building installations, the purchase of 100 % green electricity, the replacement of paperless workflows with digital signatures, the application of environmental criteria in all tender procedures (with customised green criteria for calls for tender above EUR 60 000), a focus on waste reduction and increase in the recycling rate, the implementation of measures for a more sustainable travel by staff, including financial contributions by the Committee to its staff’s public transport costs, the use of full remote interpretation for statutory meetings, and other energy saving measures; notes with satisfaction from the Questionnaire a reduction of carbon emissions linked to the Committee’s administration’s activities by 18 % compared to 2019;

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Changed42.50. Notes with satisfaction from the questionnaire that, thanks to its energy saving measures, the Committee’s energy consumption was reduced by an estimated 3,4 % in 2023 compared to 2022, corresponding to a financial gain of EUR 64 240; congratulates the Committees for having exceeded the EMAS objectives for 2021-200252021-2025 in all areas (electricity, gas, water, waste, waste sorting, paper for office use, CO2 emissions);

Interinstitutional cooperation

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Changed43.51. Welcomes the budgetary and administrative savings achieved through interinstitutional cooperation, and in particular the close cooperation established at administrative level with the EESC, with which the Committee shares premises and joint services in the areas of translation, infrastructure, logistics and IT, with 470 members of staff and approximately EUR 60 million (excluding salary related expenditures) pooled together by both institutions in 2023; notes with satisfaction that the Committee further extended its cooperation with the EESC by exploiting additional synergies through joint medical services and joint central data protection register and processing operations based on the Joint Controllership Arrangement signed by the Committee and the EESC in 2023; reiterates its call on the Committee to pursue and expand that cooperation in other areas with a view to avoiding duplication and further rationalising the operating costs of services available in the premises shared by the Committee and the EESC; invites the Committee and the EESC to explore the possibility of setting up a single administration for their joint services, keeping separate directorates or units for the services dealing with matters related to their specific and independent mandates; encourages the Committee and the EESC to continue their efforts to develop further cooperation and synergies;

52. Welcomes the Committee’s search for synergies by purchasing services from other institutions through service-level agreements and by participating in interinstitutional coordination bodies and interinstitutional procurement procedures; welcomes the efficiency gains, with regard to the communication for the 2024 European elections, reported by the Committee in the Questionnaire; notes that those gains were possible because the Committee signed with Parliament a Memorandum of Understanding in February 2024 and a new Cooperation Agreement (CP) in May 2024; notes further that the CP also covered cooperation at political and administrative level between the two institutions;

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Added53. Calls on the Committee to deepen its cooperation with Parliament and the Commission by establishing a structured annual dialogue between Committee representatives and Union legislators on key legislative files affecting regional development, climate policy, and social cohesion; urges the Committee to explore joint initiatives with Parliament’s Committees on Regional Development (REGI) and on the Environment, Climate and Food Safety (ENVI) to promote sustainable regional investments;

54. Notes that the Committee cooperates with the Commission (for an annual fee) for the handling of HR matters and the use of various IT platforms for financial management and HR; notes further that the Committee holds its plenary sessions in the premises of Parliament and the Commission to compensate for the lack of capacity in its own conference rooms and buys interpreting services from those two institutions;

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Added55. Welcomes the reviewing in 2023 of the Cooperation Agreement of the Committee with Parliament in view of its final signature in 2024; supports the cooperation of the Committee with several parliamentary committees, intergroups and directorates-general of Parliament and convene to considers vital that members of the Committee and EESC be regularly and systematically invited to relevant parliamentary exchanges, including committee meetings, on issues they are dealing with;

Communication

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Changed46.56. Notes that the Committee’s communication activities focus on relationship with press, organisation of events and digital content and social media with a total budget (current year appropriations) of approximately EUR 2,8 million in 2023; regrets a very low payment execution rate in those areas (ranging from 24,70 % to 48,20 %); notes nevertheless a high execution rate with regard to C8 appropriations (carried over from 2022 to 2023) of between 98 % and 100 %; askscalls on the Committee to take measures for improving its budgetary planning with regard to communication related budgetary items;

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Changed47.57. Notes with satisfaction the Committee’s achievements in promoting Union policies and programs at local and regional level, improving the outreach of its consultative works and enhancing its visibility and impact; notes that the Committee's communication strategy seeks to strengthen its institutional and political profile as the voice of the Union's regions, cities, villages, and municipalities, while showcasing the essential contributions of its members in connecting Union policies with citizens and fostering engagement at the local and regional level; notes in this context the Committee’s communication actions in 2023 in areas such as: - cohesion (e.g., the ‘Promoting cohesion as a fundamental value of the Union’Union’s campaign in the framework of the EURegionsWeek with more than 8 000 participants); - climate change (e.g., the ‘Building resilient and innovative local communities’ campaign); -democracy- democracy (e.g., the ‘A new chapter for EU democracy’ campaign with 1 400 registrations for participation at the 14th EuropCom conference); - rural development (the ‘2023 LEADER European Congress’ conference) in 2023; commends the Committee for the increase in the number of persons registered in the Network of Regional and Local EU Councillors (from 2 307 in 2022 to 3 000 in 2023) and the number of participants in the Young Elected Politicians programme (from 775 in 2022 to 836 in 2023);

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Added58. Welcomes the Committee’s efforts to increase outreach to regional governments and local communities, including the expansion of the Network of Regional and Local EU Councillors and the Young Elected Politicians program; calls on the Committee to allocate additional resources to support regional capacity-building programs that empower local governments to better implement Union policies;

59. Notes the Committee’s success with regard to media outreach as shown by the overall metrics for 2023, such as: 13 210 media mentions, 129 % increase on web visitors and 11 % increase on followers; notes that in terms of digital engagement, the Committee fell short of achieving its target for 2023; notes that, at the end of 2023, the Committee had 200 000 followers on its social media channels, i.e., 15 % more than in 2022 of which 57 603 followers (+5 %) on X (ex-Twitter), 61 170 (+5 %) on Facebook, 68 613 (+31 %) on LinkedIn and 15 392 (+47 %) on Instagram;

60. Notes with satisfaction from the Questionnaire the Committee’s initiatives to raise awareness about the specific measures of the Digital Services Act and the Digital Markets Acts, as well as cybersecurity and online safety; acknowledges the Committee’s role in advancing the Union’s path to a digital future; commends in this context the Committee for organising in 2023 the Digital Masterclass series, for both staff and external audiences.