Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-04-11-Speech-2-214"
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"en.20000411.8.2-214"2
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"Mr President, the Commission is doing its utmost to settle proper payment applications within 60 days. The large majority of invoices can be paid within this period and the number of overdue payments is falling satisfactorily. However, the honourable Member’s question obviously refers not only to settlements in the narrow sense of the word, but to the question of how many commitments from previous budget years have yet to be paid. So what we are talking about is the period of time between the first promise of funds for a project and a specific contract and the period of time between the commitment and the actual payment of funds.
The Commission submitted a working paper to the budgetary authority last year in which it made a comprehensive analysis of developments, broken down by sector and underlying factors, and suggested remedies. The Commission is currently updating this analysis. In terms of volume, commitments, i.e. sums that will need to be converted to payments in later years, were around EUR 71 billion at the end of 1999.
Developments in these old cases are influenced, de facto, by several factors and I think that it is important to make that clear here. The first factor is the ratio between commitment appropriations and payment appropriations which the budgetary authority applies to the budget every year. For the year 2000, for example, the budget contained approximately EUR 4 billion more in commitment appropriations than in funds for payments.
The second factor relates to the take-up of these budgetary funds, i.e. both commitment appropriations and payment appropriations. Finally, the release of commitments for which no more payment applications are expected, so-called sleeping commitments, a somewhat misleading term meaning commitments which obviously will no longer be converted to specific commitments and specific payment commitments, also plays a not inconsiderable role.
However, the Commission is unable to subscribe to the honourable Member’s view that delays in implementing Community projects robs them of any legitimate purpose; on the contrary. As soon as the Commission comes to the conclusion that no more substantiated payment applications are expected for a project, for example because the project has been suspended or abandoned, it orders the corresponding commitments to be released. This applied to a sum of around EUR 1 billion in 1999.
I should stress that the time lag between overall commitment appropriations and their conversion to specific projects is a feature of many Union programmes. This applies, for example, to multiannual programmes and the most important in quantitative terms are the Structural Funds, which are subject to shared administration, with the Commission making commitment appropriations which are then converted into specific projects at Member State level.
In order to reduce the time lag between promises, specific projects and payment, the budgetary authorities need to decide on a balanced ratio between commitment and payment appropriations and there needs to be real pressure to speed up the implementation of programmes. The Commission has discussed precisely this today as part of the debate on the revision of the financial regulation and I can assure you that we intend to change the rules in order to tighten up the time scale. I hope that we can count on your support."@en1
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