EU financial watchdog criticises medicines initiative
Says initiative has been slow to develop proper accounting and spending controls
The European Union’s (EU) financial watchdog the Court of Auditors has released a report criticising the EU’s innovative medicines initiative for being slow to develop proper accounting and spending controls.
Assessing its performance in 2010, the Court said the initiative had ‘not completely implemented its internal controls and financial information systems’ and added that ‘further work is needed in establishing and documenting the accounting procedures and controls relating to the closure of the accounts and the recognition and measurement of the operational expenditure’.
The Court noted that by the end of 2010, ‘underlying business processes had not yet been formalised and had not been validated’, as required by the medicines initiative’s own financial rules.
As regards information technology controls, its formalisation of policies and procedures were ‘lagging behind in certain areas’, the Court said.
All this aside, the watchdog approved the initiative’s accounts for 2010, saying they were ‘in all material respects, legal and regular’.