Discharge of the Council in respect of the 2024 budget

The discharge is the final stage of the EU budget audit. Each year, MEPs assess how the various institutions have managed the funds from the common budget and decide whether to grant them discharge. Discharge may be granted, the decision on it may be postponed, or it may be refused. On behalf of the European Council and the Council, discharge is granted to the Secretary-General of the Council.

The decision on discharge for the year 2024 was taken for the second time. On 29 April 2026, the decision was deferred and the report was referred back to the Committee on Budgetary Control (CONT). On 1 October 2026, the committee approved a new report. The rapporteur is Pasquale Tridico of The Left group. Paragraph 1 of the adopted decision reads: ‘refuses to grant discharge to the Secretary-General of the Council in respect of the implementation of the budget of the European Council and the Council for the financial year 2024’.

Note the direction of the vote. There was a single vote on the entire text, i.e. on both the decision and the accompanying resolution containing observations. Those who voted in favour supported the refusal to grant discharge and the criticism of the Council. Those who voted against opposed this refusal.

What the resolution criticises the Council for:

Lack of cooperation. According to the resolution, the Council has refused to cooperate on the granting of discharge since 2009, despite Parliament’s repeated attempts to do so (paragraphs 1–3). On 22 September 2025, Parliament’s services sent a questionnaire containing 103 questions to the Council’s Secretariat. On 3 October 2025, the General Secretariat of the Council announced that it would not respond to the questionnaire and that the Council would not attend the hearing on 6 November 2025. All other bodies invited to the hearing attended (paragraphs 6–7). Although a representative of the Council Presidency offered ‘meaningful and pragmatic cooperation’ on 6 May 2025, the resolution calls for this to finally be reflected in concrete steps (paragraph 18).

Non-transparent law-making. The resolution refers to the recommendation of the European Ombudsman (OI/2/2017/TE) and to the judgment of the General Court in Case T-163/21 De Capitani v Council of 25 January 2023. According to this judgment, the documents of the Council’s working groups are of a legislative nature and are therefore subject to the right of access to documents. The resolution calls on the Council to fully implement the judgment (paragraphs 10, 16, J, K).

Further criticisms. The Council has not yet split the budget of the European Council and the Council into two separate budgets to show how much the European Council costs (paragraph 20). The resolution calls for full transparency regarding IT procurement, the transition to the cloud and external consultancy (paragraph 4). It also calls for balanced geographical representation in senior positions (paragraph 5). It criticises the fact that unanimous voting in the European Council paralyses decision-making and exposes the Union to the risk of being blocked or blackmailed by individual Member States. It therefore calls for targeted amendments to the Treaties (point 21). The criticisms set out in the April resolution remain valid (point 19).

Voting result: 434 in favour, 203 against, 21 abstentions. The EPP was largely in favour: 153 in favour, 2 against, 10 abstentions. The S&D voted overwhelmingly in favour (123 in favour, 3 against). Renew was mostly in favour (69 in favour, 1 against, 3 abstentions). Greens/EFA voted unanimously in favour (47). The Left (far left) was mostly in favour (36 in favour, 4 against, 2 abstentions). The ECR, PfE and ESN – that is, the far right – did not cast a single vote against the motion. The ECR voted against (72 against, 4 abstentions), whilst the PfE (79) and ESN (24) voted unanimously against.