Amending budget 3/2008: bluetongue vaccinations; Joint Technology Initiatives; EU Solidarity Fund; establishment plans of European Institute for Gender Equality and European Economic and Social Committee (EESC)

PURPOSE: to present a Preliminary Draft Amending Budget (PDAB) No 3 to the EU general budget for the financial year 2008.

CONTENT: the Preliminary Draft Amending Budget (PDAB) No 3 for the financial year 2008 covers the following elements:

• the budgeting of the revenue accruing from the Microsoft case;
• the budgeting of part of the savings arising from the smaller than estimated increase for pay and pensions in 2007, leading to a reduction of EUR 2.3 million in commitment and payment appropriations under heading 5;
• reinforcement of the emergency fund for veterinary measures due to the bluetongue crisis by EUR 130 million in commitment appropriations, and EUR 63.95 million in payment appropriations;
• creation of the necessary budgetary structure to accommodate four Joint Technology Initiatives: Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI), Clean Sky, ARTEMIS (Joint Technology Initiative in Embedded Computing Systems) and ENIAC (European Technology Platform on Nanoelectronics);
• mobilisation of the EU Solidarity Fund for an amount of EUR 98 million in commitment and payment appropriations relating to forest fires in Greece in August 2007 and floods in Slovenia in September 2007 (see ACI/2008/2091);
• modifications to the establishment plan of the European Institute for Gender Equality;
• modifications to the establishment plan of the European Economic and Social Committee.

CONCLUSION: the net effect of the modifications to expenditure is an increase of EUR 225.7 million in commitment appropriations, and an increase of EUR 159.6 million in payments. There will be no call for additional revenue.