The Weight of the Evidence · Chapter 10

Part Two · the Union's Money

Closing the Year

How an accountability year actually ends. The calendar that runs from March to the following May, what the European Parliament reads before it decides, and what happens when it decides not to decide yet.

Classic traps from this chapter

  1. Parliament grants discharge; the Council recommends. And the Council acts by qualified majority. An option reversing the two roles is wrong.
  2. The deadline is before 15 May of year n+2, not n+1. Seventeen months after the year ends.
  3. Discharge covers the accounts, the balance and the assets and liabilities. It is not a verdict on individual programmes and it does not certify that nothing went wrong.
  4. The statement of assurance has two limbs, not one. Reliability of the accounts, and legality and regularity of the underlying transactions.

Chapter 10 in full

The traps above are how this chapter ends. The chapter itself works the material through first — the reasoning, the sources with their article and paragraph numbers, check-yourself questions with the reasons under them, and flashcards for retrieval practice.

The Weight of the Evidence is the PassEPSO study book for the field-related test of EPSO/AD/428/26: 536 pages in 27 chapters, PDF and EPUB.

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