RESUMEN PRINCIPALES MODELOS DE GESTIÓN TECNOLÓGICA

Introduction

3.2. The year 2000 was the first financial year of the new financial perspective and of the Structural Funds’ programming period 2000 to 2006. Important features of the financial year were the new budgetary nomen- clature, considerable underutilisation of commitment and payment appropriations due, in particular, to the slower than anticipated implementation of this new period, and large-scale recourse to carry-overs of appro- priations.

3.3. A new budgetarynomenclature was adopted in the budget for the year 2000. Title B2-1, Structural Funds, was no longer subdivided byFund but into chapters, and, in particular, according to the priority objectives of the Structural Funds. This new organisa- tion has the advantage of improving identification of the appropriations for the new programming period and it is consistent with the cofinancing byobjective of multi-Fund programmes. However, with regard to the preceding periods, one result of the new nomenclature, for example, is that the entire payment appropriations for the completion of previous Objective 1 programmes under the four Structural Funds (12 000 million euro) are grouped under one article (B2-1 0 4). As the Court has alreadypointed out in its Opinions No 2/2001 and No 4/97 (1_{), for budget headings covering such amounts}

3.2. The year 2000 was mainly devoted to programming as was the case in the first years of previous Structural Funds’ programming exercises. The uptake of funding consequently failed to reach the rate expected. This situation was envisaged in the Inter-institutional Agreement of 6 May 1999 on bud- get discipline. The Commission considers that given the scale and complexity of the programming work required, the delays were lengthy but reasonable.

3.3. As a result of changes in the budget breakdown from 2000, there is now a heading for each Structural Funds’ chapter entitled ‘Completion of earlier programmes’ showing all the payment appropriations for the relevant Funds. Under the Commission’s computerised accounting system for the general budget (Sincom), there is a subdivision for this head- ing identifying the payments made by each Fund.

The structure of the budget serves, primarily, to determine the specific allocations of appropriations according to their pur- pose. The larger the number of budget items, the more com- plicated the management of appropriations becomes and the larger the number of appropriation transfers needed to ensure their optimal implementation. It can be concluded that the amount of funding allocated to budget headings is not a fun- damental criterion in determining the structure of the budget but rather the adoption of uniform decisions on expenditure.

(1_{) Opinion No 2/2001 on a proposal for a Council Regula-}

tion on the Financial Regulation applicable to the general budget of the European Communities (submitted pursu- ant to Article 279 of the EC Treaty), point 6 (OJ C 162, 5.6.2001, p. 1). Opinion No 4/97 on the proposal for a Council Regulation (Euratom, ECSC, EC) amending the Financial Regulation of 21 December 1977 applicable to the general budget of the European Communities, point 15 and Annexes 1.20 and 1.21 (OJ C 57, 23.2.1998, p. 1).

the budgetaryprinciple of specification is divested of meaning at the verymoment the budget is drawn up. The result is the coexistence of budget headings to which huge amounts in appropriations have been allo- cated and of others covering onlya few thousand euro. 3.4. Structural measures accounted for 25,3 % of the commitments and 33,1 % of the payments against the total appropriations available in 2000 (for more details, seeTables 3.2 and3.3). Commitments under the new programming period 2000 to 2006 for the SFs amounted to 15 446,2 million euro; payments totalled 5 906,7 million euro. Transactions in respect of previ- ous periods amount to 2 397 million euro in commit- ments made, mainlyagainst appropriations carried over from the previous financial year; the figure for pay- ments is 19 998,9 million euro. As regards the Cohe- sion Fund, transactions totalled 2 246,4 million euro in commitments and 1 685,2 million euro in payments. 3.5. Budget estimates turned out, once again, to be veryfar removed from actual implementation and the budgetaryinformation exchange network between the Commission and the finance ministers in the Member States proved to be ineffectual. With regard to the pay- ment appropriations, the fact that 7 % of Fund inter- ventions were paid in instalments, instead of the 3,5 % anticipated when the budget was drawn up, and that requests for payment for the previous periods amount- ing to 6 500 million euro, which were awaiting appraisal and payment at the end of 1999, were settled late, meant that it was possible to avoid under-implementation on an even greater scale (2_).

3.5. The Commission is aware of the relatively wide dis- crepancy as compared with the budget estimates for 2000, especially in the case of the payment appropriations. In the case of commitment appropriations, the estimates for 2000 depended on the uncertainty regarding the adoption of programmes before the end of the financial year and to a lesser extent on the share-out between the different Funds of the assistance granted to programmes.

The late adoption of the assistance packages prevented funds being disbursed in compliance with the financial perspectives at the end of the financial year and during the first quarter of 2001.

As regards the payment appropriations, delays in the adop- tion of new programmes resulted in the under-utilisation of the appropriations for payment of the initial advance. In view of the situation regarding the availability of appropriations, the Commission decided to pay the entire amount of the advance in accordance with the regulation.

Where programmes are under way, payments are made on the basis of applications submitted by the Member States at irregular intervals. The system based on the budget informa- tion exchange network referred to by the Court can be ques- tioned only in relation to the forecasts for these latter opera- tions.

However, the Commission considers that the new arrange- ments for preparing forecasts based on Article 32(7) of Council Regulation (EC) No 1260/1999 will mean that forecasts will gradually be improved, as and when the

(2_{) See the Annual Report for 1999, paragraphs 3.13 and}

3.6. 160 million euro of the Communities’ legal obli- gations for the programming period 1994 to 1999 had no budget cover (3_{). As no commitment appropriations}

were entered in the budget for the year 2000 for comple- tion of the measures for the period 1994 to 1999, this shortfall had to be covered, in the end, bya matching reduction in those allocations to the new programming period which had originallybeen earmarked, in accor- dance with the provisions of the regulation, for innova- tive measures and technical assistance (4_{). This was done}

bya transfer made bythe budgetaryauthority.