For its part, the EASO said it had implemented further changes following the ECA’s audit period and this week’s report was “somewhat outdated”.

A European Court of Auditors press release issued on 15 October said that:

“EASO, which provides support to Member States – currently mainly Italy and Greece – in the context of the migration crisis, has taken concrete and positive steps to improve its governance. However, the auditors again found irregularities in a major procurement in 2018, which shows that the corrective actions have still not taken full effect. In addition, EASO’s staffing situation, not least its vacant managerial posts in administration, raises particular concern. Also, lacking a sufficient number of experts provided by the Member States, EASO delegated core tasks to economic operators to the extent that it became critically dependent on them. This caused a permanent business continuity risk in a sensitive area that is key for the effective management of migrant flows to Europe.”

According to the ECA report:

“Overall, we conclude that the unsatisfactory situation reported for the year 2017 as regards the Office’s governance and internal control arrangements and the legality and regularity of transactions is only slowly improving and that the corrective actions launched by the Office’s management still need to be completed. This is also reflected by the fact that the major procurement procedure carried out by the Office in 2018 was again irregular due to major weaknesses in the procedure.”

The ECA report further stated:

“For EASO, we continue to draw attention to the fact that as from the end of 2017, the human resources situation at the Office had deteriorated exponentially. The majority of vacancies were still not filled at the end of 2018. Of particular concern is the lack of managers in the administration department. Overall, this situation causes a significant risk to the continuation of the Office’s operations at the current scale.”

A spokesman for the EASO told Delano on Tuesday that:

“… the reference period of the ECA report ended just a few months after EASO began implementing its Governance Action Plan just over a year ago. In the meantime, the majority of the actions have been implemented, significantly bolstering the Agency’s safeguards and also making the ECA report somewhat outdated.”

In a press release issued on 15 October, the EU asylum coordination agency said:

“EASO takes the findings of the European Court of Auditors (ECA) seriously and continues to ensure that improvements are implemented swiftly. EASO also welcomes the acknowledgment by ECA of the concrete and positive steps taken to improve the Agency’s governance, which was recognised by the European Parliament in September 2019.”

The EASO said it had already completed 48 out of 61 actions in the reform plan. But it also stated:

“Due to the insufficient numbers of national experts deployed by Member States (16%), it has been a challenge for the Agency to deliver the requested support, which required the use of alternative solutions including the services of temporary agency workers to meet the needs.”

The EASO is based in Valletta‎, Malta, where it has around 200 staff members and supports EU countries in applying common asylum rules.

Based in Kirchberg, the ECA employs nearly 1,000 staff members and conducts checks on how efficiently EU funds are spent. The ECA gave clean bills of health to the 40 other EU agencies checked in its annual review.