Amending and supplementary budget 6/2002: frontloading exercise for the 2004 enlargement

PURPOSE : to present the draft supplementary and amending budget No 6 for the financial year 2002 as established by the Council. CONTENT : on 13 November 2002 the Commission sent the Council preliminary draft supplementary and amending budget (PDSAB) No 6 for the financial year 2002. It concerns Section I (Parliament), II (Council), III (Commission), IV (Court of Justice), V (Court of Auditors), (VI - Economic and Social Committee), VIII - Part A (European Ombudsman) and VIII - Part B (European Data Protection Supervisor). The aim of the Commission proposal is to collect those appropriations which are not expected to be used in 2002 and transfer them to budget headings where they can still be used before the end of the financial year by bringing forward expenditure originally intended for 2003. The appropriations for these budget headings in the 2003 budget will then be reduced by the amount brought forward in 2002. This "frontloading" exercise was proposed by the budgetary authority at the conciliation meeting on 19 July 2002, when it was decided not to use the flexibility instrument for heading 5 (administrative expenditure) to cover the additional requirements in 2003 arising from preparations for enlargement. PDSAB 6/2002 constitutes an interinstitutional redeployment exercise which also involves internal transfers within each section of the budget. Those transfers are not directly connected with the frontloading exercise, but relate to the ongoing multiannual programming of some of the expenditure linked with preparations for enlargement. The Commission launched the frontloading exercise in consultation with the Secretaries-General of the institutions. The total usable appropriations reported by the institutions amount to EUR 77,13 million, the breakdown of which by institution is shown in the technical annex to the proposal. The Council is also contributing to this exercise through an internal transfer of EUR 3 million which will allow it to bring forward some of the expenditure involved in publishing the body of Community law. This amount is not included in PDSAB 6/02. In addition, the Court of Justice and the Court of Auditors are also using this PDSAB to make internal adjustments to their budgets of the order of EUR 150 000 and EUR 500 000 respectively, in order to finance their needs for computer equipment and additional premises not covered by the frontloading exercise. On 26 November 2002, the Council established draft supplementary and amending budget 6/2002 by adopting the Commission's proposal. As a consequence of 6/2002, the total appropriations in the 2002 budget remain unchanged.�