WRITTEN QUESTION P-2581/00 by Mihail Papayannakis (GUE/NGL) to the Commission. Agreement on international humane trapping standards.
Date: 2000-07-25
Institutions: European Parliament, Provisional data
Subjects: animal welfare, hunting regulations, international agreement, international standard

C 136 E/52

Official Journal of the European Communities

EN

8.5.2001

The Directive also stipulates that the creditor is to be entitled to interest for late payment to the extent that
he has fulfilled his contractual and legal obligations and has not received the amount due on time, unless
the debtor is not responsible for the delay.

The Commission has been applying these rules to its own transactions since the second half of 1997,
when it decided to insert in its contracts a clause formally requiring that payment be made with 60 days
and providing that the creditor may demand interest on late payment once the 60-day deadline has passed.

The Commission is, however, aware of the problems posed by the length of time which it itself takes to
make payment. In July 2000 it drew up a number of guidelines for its departments, in line with the
objectives set in the White Paper on Reform (2). The speeding up of payments is seen as one way of
fostering a service-oriented culture within the Commission.

Some of these guidelines are concerned with simplifying the checks on contractors(cid:146) performance. They
recommend, for example, that the time allowed for the approval of reports be limited, that the technical
annexes to contracts (setting out what contractors are to deliver to the Commission at each stage of a
project) be drawn up with precision and be verifiable by both parties, that the financial clauses be
simplified and that fewer supporting documents be required for payment requests under contracts based
wholly or partly on procedures for the reimbursement of costs, by setting standard amounts for certain
categories of expenditure such as travel expenses.

The Commission must nevertheless verify whether the payments it makes are fully justified and must
therefore check all the payment requests which it receives.

(1) OJ L 200, 8.8.2000.
(2) COM(2000) 200 final.

(2001/C 136 E/058)

WRITTEN QUESTION P-2581/00

by Mihail Papayannakis (GUE/NGL) to the Commission

Subject: Agreement on international humane trapping standards

(25 July 2000)

An agreement on international humane trapping standards was signed by the European Community
in December 1997. In order to implement these standards in Member States properly it has long been
accepted that the Commission will have to draw up a legal instrument. Will the Commission explain why
such a legal instrument has not yet been published and when can it be expected? Could it also give an
assurance that, in view of the strong criticism of this Agreement by the European Parliament and animal
welfare organisations, it will use the opportunity afforded by the legal instrument to introduce standards
which are more exacting than those set out in the Agreement?

Answer given by Mr Lamy on behalf of the Commission

(19 September 2000)

implementation of the agreement on international humane trapping standards will require
The full
considerable work by all parties. In order to prepare the ground for introducing appropriate implementing
measures, an independent study was carried out for the Commission on trapping in the Member States.
This provides details about the current levels of trapping activity, trapping techniques and research, and
trapping legislation. The final results of this study have recently become available to the Commission. On
the basis of this work, the Commission is now considering the content and format of the implementing
legislation.

In this context, the Commission does not envisage going further than is required under the agreement. The
agreement is the result of lengthy and intense negotiations with the Community(cid:146)s international partners.
To seek now to go beyond what was agreed during those negotiations would represent bad faith on the
part of the Community and might prejudice the operation of the agreement as a whole. Moreover, there is
a provision in the agreement for future up-dating of trapping standards in the light of current research
work into humane trapping and animal welfare.