B3-1532/93

Resolution on the implementation of the Community budget for the 1993 financial year (Notenboom procedure)

The European Parliament,

-having regard to the Commission's statement in reply to Oral Question B3-1199/93 on the implementation of the European Communities' budget for the 1993 financial year,

-having regard to the data set out in the report on the implementation of the budget of the European Communities as at 31 August 1993 (SEC(93)1161),

Procedure

1.Points out that the receipt of the information on which the Notenboom Oral Question is based tends to occur too late to be of any use in (i) identifying and rectifying problems in the implementation of the current year's budget, and (ii) establishing the following year's budget; instructs its Committee on Budgetary Control, in cooperation with the Committee on Budgets and the Commission, to examine ways in which the procedure might be adapted to the real needs of the budgetary authority;

Agricultural expenditure

2.Regrets the fact that estimates of agricultural spending by the Member States remain highly inaccurate and regrets the budgetary consequences arising from this; notes the Commission's view that estimates will improve with the reform of the CAP and instructs its Committee on Budgetary Control to monitor progress in this area;

3.Notes that the great majority of the excess expenditure vis-à-vis the budget in Chapters B1-12, B1-14, B1-15, B1-21 and B1-22 is attributable to market factors and changes in Council regulations rather than to currency fluctuations; deplores the fact therefore that the Commission has again failed to take appropriate management action to restrain expenditure in these chapters in the pursuit of budgetary discipline;

Structural Funds

4.Welcomes the fact that the Structural Funds will see near complete utilization by the end of the year, while regretting the fact that the Commission proposes the transfer of large sums between the different funds in order to achieve this goal;

5.Re-emphasizes that environmental programmes and transport programmes should have the same priority for spending under the Cohesion Fund; notes, however, that 78% of the funding requests received to date by the Commission fall under the area of transport policy; therefore calls on the Commission, in approving programmes, to redress the balance between these two priorities;

Environment

6.Notes that, as far as the Community is concerned, the European environmental effort agreed on at the Rio Summit is currently only apparent in Item B7-5041 (tropical forests); considers this situation highly unsatisfactory; asks the Commission by the end of the year to provide an overview of all its budgetary efforts relating to the Rio Summit and an evaluation of the joint efforts of Member States and the Community in relation to the total amount established there;

Aid to the Palestinian population of the Occupied Territories

7.Deplores the slow progress in implementing financial aid for the Palestinian population of the Occupied Territories under Article B7-701, created on an emergency basis by a supplementary and amending budget in 1991; also deplores the Commission's failure to draw Parliament's attention sooner to the fact that implementation of this aid was being hampered by the occupation; asks the Commission to pay the outstanding balance of the grant to the Palestinians forthwith; trusts that the large-scale aid which the Community pledged for the Palestinian population following signature of the peace accord with Israel on 13 September 1993 will be implemented more speedily than in the present instance;

Use of anti-fraud appropriations

8.Is not convinced that the Member States, with the help of the Commission, have done all they could to improve the take-up of appropriations intended to strengthen national controls against fraud on the Community budget;

Town twinning subsidies

9.Recalls that appropriations under Article A-306 are intended to cover the promotion of twinning arrangements between local authorities in regions which are disadvantaged owing to their geographical situation, because their language is less widely used, or because they have recently joined the Community; notes with concern that the distribution of subsidies for town twinnings still does not reflect these criteria: of all the subsidies awarded in the first half of this year, 40% have gone to communes in France but less than 1% have gone respectively to communes in Denmark, Greece and Portugal;

'Early warning'

10.Reminds the Commission of its duty to inform the Parliament specifically of cases where it expects budgetary implementation difficulties;

Implementation of the CSFs

11.Acknowledges that the Commission faces special difficulties in implementing the CSFs in some Member States; recalls in this connection that the implementation of the Structural Funds in the various Member States has been going on for many years now and that an adjustment to and/or change in the CSFs should be carried out on the basis of the requisite evaluation reports so that rapid and effective implementation may be guaranteed; wonders whether the Commission has sought the requisite measure of cooperation in all cases;

Cohesion Fund

12.Acknowledges that the Commission has made great efforts to implement the relatively new instrument that is the Cohesion Fund in the short time allotted to it; points out, however, that a large number of problems have existed for years in the fields of transport infrastructure and environmental protection and that the Commission was aware of them and could have addressed them in this case; wonders, further, whether it would not be appropriate to cooperate in this case with the EIB which has been supporting projects in these fields for a long time;

CEDEFOP

13.Regrets bitterly that the Commission and the recipient Community institution did not succeed in using the additional appropriations allocated to it for the planned European Foundation for Training in the Countries of Central and Eastern Europe; sees this as a disapproval of Parliament's political intentions and intends to draw the appropriate conclusions; calls on the Commission, therefore, to use the appropriations by the end of the year via the Tempus Programme;

IFEH

14.Regrets bitterly that the Commission is raising points of order to justify the non-utilization of appropriations for Europe Houses; notes with incredulity that, as regards the recipients, one single payment method suffices to hamper the use of adopted appropriations practically for a whole year; calls on the Commission, therefore, at all events to utilize fully the commitment appropriations for 1993;

European Agency for Safety and Health Protection at the Workplace

15.Welcomes the comparatively high rate of utilization of the appropriations entered for this planned agency and feels justified in its view that the practical treatment of a problem does not always require the cumbersome establishment of a satellite body and that the Member States' failure to take a decision on the seat of various bodies leads to a delay in the requisite measures being taken, which Parliament has sensibly corrected in this way;

Combating Aids and other transmissible diseases, health protection and measures to combat alcohol abuse

16.Welcomes expressly the implementation of the remarks adopted by Parliament and calls on the Commission to make available a list of organizations assisted in addition to the percentages for the financing of projects undertaken by non-governmental organizations already mentioned;

Training and exchange of experts in nuclear safety in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe and the States of the CIS

17.Considers it totally unacceptable for remaining appropriations to be transferred to Item B4-2020 which covers services for specific work in the European Atomic Energy Community; insists that the Commission uses the remaining appropriations in accordance with the list of tasks called for by Parliament;

Joint Research Centre

18.Welcomes in principle the measures taken by the Commission to reduce the average age of the staff at the Joint Research Centre; condemns strongly the attitude of the Council which has still not adopted any legal basis for the implementation of this measure although Parliament, as one arm of the budgetary authority, has made the corresponding appropriations available; calls, in connection with the future staff structure of the JRC, for a change in the recruitment procedure so that current problems do not recur;

Food aid for the CIS

19.Regrets that excessive frictional losses have occurred in food aid for the CIS countries because of disputes and other irregularities and wonders why the Commission, despite decades of practice and experience in the field of food aid, cannot reduce such frictional losses to a minimum; calls, in this connection, for NGOs to be involved in cases where its own capabilities and experience are inadequate;

AVICENNE Programme

20.Condemns, not only in the Avicenne Programme but also in other programmes, the fact that calls for tender for programmes and projects are largely issued too late (end of September); wonders, therefore, how third parties in the current year can have programmes approved or can implement programmes, if project approval is not given until late autumn;

Population movements

21.Considers it completely unacceptable, in view of the substantial mass migrations worldwide, and particularly into the European Community, that the Commission has not used these appropriations to date, although Parliament has made them available; finds it totally incredible that it is proposed in the remaining months to implement various projects and carry out a feasibility study, which itself will be followed by four implementing studies; calls on the Commission, therefore, to have the implementing studies drawn up immediately;

Emergency aid for refugees and displaced persons in developing countries

22.Calls on the Commission to show the amount of appropriations utilized and in what area in respect of this specific aspect of the budget for the Fourth Lomé Convention;

PHARE and TACIS

23.Considers the commitment appropriations for PHARE and TACIS to be quite adequate; fears, however, that the low rate of utilization stems from the fact that a large number of projects were not implemented in adequate form and fears, therefore, that there will also be a substantial build-up of payment appropriations in 1994; considers it unacceptable that calls for tender for cooperation with non-governmental organizations were only issued on 30 September 1993 and that, consequently, implementation is virtually excluded; condemns the fact that the cross-border cooperation desired by Parliament was addressed in an inadequate manner and draws the necessary conclusions from that for the 1994 budgetary procedure; would like to see greater scrutiny and improved cooperation with the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development;

24.Instructs its President to forward this resolution to the Council and the Commission.