About this report
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About this report

About this report

Special reports and reviews should include a single paragraph summarising the report in clear and accessible language.
Performance audit Review
Reporting
Ref: 38.360

Principles

Before the move to electronic publishing, all our printed special reports included on the back cover a single paragraph summarising the report in clear and accessible language. There are many uses for such texts. For example, they are included in our annual activity report and our monthly journal to provide a short description of a report’s content, they facilitate the drafting of our press notices and other media material, and they have the potential to feature on our website to encourage readers to access the full report.

Instructions

We therefore recommend that a summary paragraph is prepared for each special report, titled ‘About this report’, which should:
  • be no more than 120 words long (in English),
  • comprise a description of the context, preferably giving an indication of the problem that needed to be addressed or why we chose to do an audit on this topic;
  • comprise an indication, in non-technical language, of what we found – our main conclusions; and
  • an indication of our main recommendations.
For each review a similar paragraph should be prepared, titled 'About this review', which should be in line with the different nature of reviews. The summary paragraph is not part of the report and does not figure in any of the sections referred to in the table of contents. Therefore, the paragraph does not form part of the adversarial procedure and there is no right of reply for our auditees. Audit teams are responsible for drafting the paragraph, and can also consult the communications experts in the Directorate of the Presidency. To help ensure quality and consistency, we recommend that each draft summary paragraph is submitted to the Chamber for adoption along with the report to which it relates. This should take place after the adversarial procedure, on the Chamber reading of the APC document. The draft summary paragraph should be included in the document presented to the Chamber, placed before, and clearly separate from, the draft report. Chambers should ensure that the paragraph is clear, consistent with the report and in line with these guidelines.

Resources

Examples

  • Many fishing stocks in Europe, particularly in the Mediterranean, continue to be overfished. The EU has a number of measures in place to address this problem, including quotas, limits on the size of fishing fleets, and restrictions on certain fishing activities. Responsibility for most of these measures lies with the member states. We found that, while progress has been made, the EU’s system is not yet effective, with significant weaknesses at both member state and Commission level. We make a number of recommendations, including a revision of the relevant legislation.
  • Tunisia’s 2011 ‘Jasmine revolution’ was the first Arab Spring uprising. Since then, the country has advanced substantially towards democracy despite political instability, social unrest and terrorist attacks. Between 2011 and 2015, the EU allocated €1.3 billion for assistance to Tunisia. We found this money was generally well spent as it contributed significantly to the democratic transition and the economic stability of Tunisia. However, there were shortcomings in the Commission’s management of EU assistance and the Tunisian authorities were very slow in implementing some significant reforms. We make a number of recommendations to improve the planning and management of EU activities in this area.
  • We assessed whether the Commission’s preventive measures and financial corrections were effective in protecting the EU budget from irregular expenditure in the area of Cohesion. Cohesion policy accounts for 37% of spending from the EU budget and is to be some 350 billion euro for each of the periods 2007-2013 and 2014-2020. Responsibility for Cohesion spending is shared between the Commission and the member states. Overall, we find the Commission has made effective use of the measures at its disposal. But it still needs to be strict in ensuring payments are free from error, improving its reporting procedures and making use of its new, stronger powers.
Last Modified: 04/11/2021 11:33   Tags: