WRITTEN QUESTION E-1568/97 by Honório Novo (GUE/NGL) to the Commission (6 May 1997)

Subject: Delays in the payment of Community co-funding

As a result of meetings which I have held in my country (Portugal) with a number of local authorities, bodies and organizations which are engaged in various projects involving Community co-funding, I have learned that there are serious delays in the payment of invoices which are regularly submitted by the bodies and local authorities in question to the appropriate national authorities. The delays can be as long as several months (in most cases nine or ten months, if not more).

The delays cannot be attributed to procedural irregularities on the part of the beneficiaries since payments are eventually made without any alteration to the documents initially submitted to the national authorities, which indicates that those documents are legally in order.

Furthermore, most of the bodies with which I have had dealings do not want - or do not dare - to contact the Commission direct in order to ascertain the reasons which could account for such extensive delays, since they fear that they will not be considered for future projects.

In view of this situation, which clearly jeopardizes the satisfactory completion of projects and could undermine the financial soundness of the authorities, bodies and organization which devise and promote them. I consider it my duty to draw the matter to the Commission's attention. Would the Commission therefore answer the following question?

1. Are these extensive delays (which are widespread in Portugal) in the making of payments to bodies and organizations the result of delays in the transfer of the corresponding amounts from the Commission to the national authorities, or are they due to late payment of funds by the national authorities?

Answer given by Mr Liikanen on behalf of the Commission (26 June 1997)

The Commission is very concerned that its payments should be made within the agreed time limits.

For this reason it has set a target of 60 days within which payments should be made. This period runs from the date on which the Commission receives an invoice or properly completed payment request to the date on which its bank account is debited. The authorizing department is obliged to record the date on which the invoice is received in the central accounting system, which means that statistics are available for each department to be able to measure its performance in complying with payment deadlines. Data for the last financial year (1996) show that the 60-day deadline is generally adhered to.

The Commission is not aware of any particular problems with payments to Portuguese bodies or associations. However, the Honourable Member should note that the period counted by the Commission, which it keeps close tabs on, runs up until the instruction for one of its bank accounts to be debited is recorded. The Commission uses the SWIFT network for virtually all its payments. In practice this means that the money reaches the recipient authority within 2 to 4 working days following the transfer order. The Commission has no control over how the Community money is subsequently redistributed by the national authorities.

The Commission would ask the Honourable Member to notify it of the cases he is referring to where payment has apparently taken an unusually long time, so that it can look into them more closely.