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(2004/C 84 E/0037)

WRITTEN QUESTION E-2665/03

by Daniel Hannan (PPE-DE) to the Commission

(10 September 2003)

Subject:   European citizenship financing

The proposal for a Council Decision establishing a Community action programme to promote active European citizenship (civic participation) (presented by the Commission) C5-0321/03 lists several means by which the Commission has been providing financial support for the idea of ‘European citizenship’.

Following the assertions made in this document, will the Commission say:

Will the Commission also say which organisations are set to receive funding under three headings in Part Β of the budget; which organisations make up the ‘Platform of European Social NGOs’ and how much co-finance funding each of these organisations will receive under budget headings B3-4105 and B5-803?

Finally: ‘Most of these operations have hitherto been carried out without any legal basis’ — What are the implications for the Commission of carrying out operations ‘without any legal basis’?

Answer given by Mrs Reding on behalf of the Commission

(20 October 2003)

The Commission has provided financial support to organisations actively working for European cooperation (budget line A-3021), to European Think Tanks researching European integration policy (budget line A-3026) and to associations and federations of European interest (budget line A-3024). A list of the organisations benefiting from Community financial support in 2003 is being sent directly to the Honourable Member and to Parliament's Secretariat.

The list of beneficiaries of these grants in 2002 can be found in: (http://europa.eu.int/comm/ secretariat_general/sgc/info_subv/commun/rap-pe_2002_en.pdf).

In its draft legal basis on European civic participation, the Commission proposes to finance organisations which received funding under Part Β of the budget in order to further promote a sustained dialogue with civil society organisations on the building of Europe and to contribute to establishing the new form of governance advocated in the Social Policy Agenda adopted at Nice. This concerns on the one hand nongovernmental organisations (NGOs), associations and federations of European interest or cross-industry trade unions. On the other hand it focuses on the organisations active in promoting fundamental social rights and combating and preventing social exclusion and discrimination which are represented in the Platform of European Social NGOs.

A list of the members of the Platform of European Social NGOs (and funding received under budget headings B3-4105 and B5-803) is being sent directly to the Honourable Member and to Parliament's Secretariat.

In the past, these operations were carried out without any legal basis because, since the appropriations were entered in Part A of the budget, they were seen as administrative expenditure and therefore did not require a legal basis. It is the disappearance of Part A as a result of the introduction of the ABB (‘activity- based budgeting’) approach that, from 2004, will make it necessary to have a legal basis for operations which can no longer be regarded as administrative expenditure; until then, a legal basis is not legally required in order to use these appropriations.

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