27.6.2008 Official Journal of the European Union L 167/69 COMMISSION DECISION of 5 March 2008 laying down rules for the implementation of Council Decision 2007/435/EC establishing the European Fund for the Integration of third-country nationals for the period 2007 to 2013 as part of the General programme ‘Solidarity and Management of Migration Flows’ as regards Member States’ management and control systems, the rules for administrative and financial management and the eligibility of expenditure on projects co-financed by the Fund (notified under document number C(2008) 795) (Only the Bulgarian, Czech, Dutch, English, Estonian, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Maltese, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish and Swedish texts are authentic) (2008/457EC) THE COMMISSION OF THE EUROPEAN COMMUNITIES, Having regard to the Treaty establishing the European Commu- nity, Having regard to Council Decision 2007/435/EC of 25 June 2007 establishing the European Fund for the Integration of third-country nationals for the period 2007 to 2013 as part of the General programme ‘Solidarity and Management of Migra- tion Flows’ (1), in particular Articles 21, 29(5), 31(6) and 33(4) thereof, Whereas: 1 ©) It is necessary to lay down the conditions under which Member States should implement the action under the Fund, in particular to identify under which circumstances the responsible authority may implement projects directly. Further provisions should also be laid down for delegated authorities. It is necessary to identify a list of procedures and/or practical arrangements that the different designated author- ities should lay down and follow for implementation of the Fund. It is necessary to lay down the obligations which the responsible authorities should have with regard to final beneficiaries in the phase leading to selection and approval of the projects to be funded and with regard to the aspects which should be covered by the verifications of the expenditure declared by the final beneficiary andfor by the partners in the project, including administrative verifications of the applications for reimbursement and on-the-spot verifications of individual projects. In order to ensure that expenditure under annual programmes can be properly audited, it is necessary to set out the criteria with which audit trails should comply in order to be considered adequate. The audits of projects and of systems are carried out under the responsibility of the audit authority. To ensure that the () OJ L 168, 28.6.2007, p. 18. audits offer adequate scope and effectiveness and are carried out in accordance with the same standards in all Member States, it is necessary to set out the conditions which the audits should fulfil, including the basis for sampling. The Member States must submit to the Commission, together with their multiannual programme, a description of their management and control systems. Since this document is one of the principal bases on which the Commission relies, in the context of shared management of the Community budget, to determine whether the financial assistance concerned is used by the Member States in accordance with the applicable rules and principles for protecting the Community’s financial interests, it is necessary to set out in detail the information that this document should contain. In order to harmonise standards for programming, following up the implementation of the Fund, auditing and certifying expenditure, it is necessary to clearly define the contents of the multiannual programme, the annual programme, the progress report, the final report, the applications for payments as well as the audit strategy, the annual audit report, the declaration of validity and the certification of expenditure. Since Member States are required to report and monitor irregularities and to recover sums wrongly paid in connection with the financing from the Fund, it is necessary to define requirements for the data sent to the Commission. Experience has shown that citizens of the European Union are insufficiently aware of the role played by the Community in funding programmes. It is therefore appropriate to define in detail the information and publicity measures necessary to bridge this communication and information gap. In order to guarantee that information on possible funding opportunities is disseminated widely to all interested parties and for the sake of transparency, the minimum measures