Mr. Kevin Cardiff:

The job of the European Court of Auditors is to audit the spending of EU institutions and agencies and the performance of those institutions, that is, we look not just at the legality and regularity of their expenditure but also their effectiveness. The two reports the committee has asked us to talk about are special reports on the effectiveness of programmes rather than whether each amount of money was given to the right person at the right time.

In my time on the court this is the first invitation we have received to this committee but some of its predecessors came to us in Luxembourg and were able to see the European Court of Justice and some other European institutions. I would guess that Mr. Murphy, who will take over from me, will be happy to extend the same invitation if the committee would like that. I am taking advantage of this being my last session and of the committee's invitation to us to introduce my successor, Mr. Murphy. He is a former auditor in the Comptroller and Auditor General's office who has worked in the European Commission and the European Court of Auditors. When the Government was looking for my successor it advertised through an open competition and Mr. Murphy was the successful candidate.

Mr. Welch is the director in the Court of Auditors who manages the staff and the operation of the area of the court that deals mostly with agriculture. The specialist on this topic is Mr. Wojciechowski, the Polish member. He rushed here from Brussels today to allow us take advantage of his expertise. He is not just the member who carried out these audits, he is a member of the division of the court which looks after agricultural and natural resources issues and is a former Member of the European Parliament, who sat on the agriculture committee of the European Parliament. He is quite expert and has a sense of what parliamentarians are interested in, as well as what auditors are interested in. I will leave it to him to introduce the two reports and then we will answer the questions between us.