Ladies and gentlemen, today’s report, which the Committee on Budgets decided to draw up at the beginning of the year, is intended to reinforce its power of monitoring the implementation of the European Union’s budget. The Committee on Budgets intends this report to discharge Parliament’s responsibility of establishing the Budget of the European Union, a responsibility conferred upon it by the Treaties, scrutinising the correspondence between the budget voted and its financial implementation. This is an essential part of respect for the political priorities laid down each year by Parliament in its financial document, a part which the Commission is sometimes wont to overlook. The Committee on Budgets had two aims: to state the situation of the first semester, identifying initial signs of deviation from the budget voted, and to provide the Commission with guidelines for the second semester. The fact that there is no increase in the own resources ceiling during the current period of the financial perspective, 2000-2006, makes it even more essential that these objectives, which will enable us to improve the efficiency of our expenditure, are achieved. With a view to this, Parliament’s scrutiny has revealed two kinds of problem: the excessive and, at times, inappropriate use of the financial flexibility instruments and the poor implementation level for some headings. To give you an idea of the amounts we are talking about, during the current financial year alone, the Commission has already presented transfers of a total volume of EUR 250 million and, for example, more than EUR 2 billion in payment appropriations were transferred during the 2001 budgetary procedure. To improve this situation, the Commission is going to present an implementation schedule as of this year. This new instrument, called for by Parliament and the Council together, will allow more accurate monitoring of the situation, although there will still be room for improvement. Indeed, we feel that the Commission should present the plan at the same time as it presents the request to the Budget Authority and should, moreover, present the information as far as possible on a case-by-case basis. To sum up, to establish a closer, more systematic link with the appropriations originally voted, assessment of requests should take into account the voted budget, the current implementation, the implementation profiles presented by the Commission, a timetable for the implementation of the remaining amount on the 'donor line' and the investigations carried out by our parliamentary committees. If this information is not deemed to be satisfactory, the transfer request will be rejected. As a general rule, transfer requests which would reduce the budget lines voted by Parliament will not, therefore, be accepted. On the other hand, the supplementary and amending budgets pose a different kind of problem and allow us to deal with unforeseen situations and make the necessary adjustments to the budget when the accounts from the previous financial year have been closed. It was thanks to SAB 1 that a solution was found to finance the Convention. SAB 2, and SAB 3 as well – which will be dealt with today – have, in actual fact, returned to the Member States a total amount of almost EUR 14 billion of payment appropriations which were not spent in the previous year. In order to improve the track record and image of the European Union, we would like, with this report, to call upon the Commission to present a plan of how the payments cancelled in the 2001 budget can be rescheduled, to present before 30 September a proper assessment of payments in 2002 and to accelerate payments on old commitments or to decommit those and cancel the obsolete payment appropriations. As things stand, for the end of the year, the Commission is forecasting an implementation rate of 100% for commitments and 97% for payments. This was only 72% in 2001 and, if these results are achieved, we will have made real progress. As regards the next SABs, certainly the reconstruction in Afghanistan and, in all probability, the situation in the Middle East could require additional resources. As regards reconstruction in Afghanistan, additional appropriations may only be used if the Commission is able to demonstrate that the appropriations already entered under the budget lines have been spent properly, taking into account the commitments given by the other donors too. Ladies and gentlemen, as you can see, this is a somewhat technical report, but it does show how necessary it is for all our parliamentary committees to concentrate on monitoring the Executive. I would like to say that, thanks to the excellent cooperation of all the shadow rapporteurs for the budget of the different committees, Mr Färm and I have in recent months created a number of monitoring groups for the various policies. If the situation improves, it will be due not least to the work of the shadow rapporteurs for the budget, which is not always obvious. Thus, in the future, the parliamentary committees will be able to make Parliament’s democratic control over the Commission even more effective. I would point out that, on 15 June, outstanding commitments totalled over EUR 111 billion, which is more than the European Union’s annual budget. Even if this figure is a reflection of the natural distribution of payments over time, a constant effort is still needed from the Commission to reduce the burden of the past. Cancelling EUR 97 million of old appropriations would be an – albeit tentative – step in the right direction. Lastly, I would like to point out that, although our cooperation with the Commission has certainly been fruitful in recent months, it may well be that we need to work together more closely to ensure that the final product is more in line with what the Budget Authority voted at the beginning of the year.

Political group: PPE-DE