| The European Parliament will vote on the Council’s 2022 financial discharge during the last plenary session of this term, starting next week. Is the Council holding its breath? Not at all. The Parliament has been rejecting the Council’s budget discharge – its annual financial accounts – since 2009 over legal disagreements on the process, as well as the former’s tendency to mix up what should be a routine financial audit with wider political topics. While the Council believes the discharge is given to the Commission-allocated budget as a whole, the Parliament believes it can break it down to one per EU organisation or institution. “The European Parliament has developed over the years an additional practice of pronouncing itself on policies and activities of other institutions in general. The Council believes that this goes far beyond the scope of budgetary discharge,” an EU official said. And they may have a point. The Parliament refused on 11 April to approve the 2022 budget discharge for the Council and the rest of the institutions until countries agree to send Patriot missile systems to Ukraine. “What I find scandalous is that Europe, which is opening the door for Ukraine, and the European Council are not even capable in such an urgency to decide to send a number of anti-missile systems to Ukraine,” liberal MEP and former Belgian prime minister Guy Verhofstadt said before proposing to delay the discharges. On top of that, an amendment was added to the discharge report calling on the Commission to rescind the controversial appointment of Markus Pieper as the SME Envoy, a move that goes directly against the wish of Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. | 