2003 budget: section III, Commission

On 2 December 2002, the Commission sent the Council letter of amendment No 4 to the preliminary draft general budget of the EC for 2003. The letter of amendment seeks to amend the statements both of revenue and expenditure in the budget, so at to adapt the latter to the provisions of the new Financial Regulation which apply from 01/01/03 (please refer to the summary dated 28/11/2002). The amendments are summarised as follows: i) accommodation by the budget of the new "assigned revenue" concept deriving from the application of the new Financial Regulation and its impact on the relevant budget headings in the statements of both revenue and expenditure; ii) further effects of the new Financial Regulation regarding, inter alia: -net amounts of traditional own resources; -new budget headings to be created on the revenue side; -references to the Financial Regulation in the budget remarks; -lay-out changes to the establishment plans of the various bodies; iii) harmonisation of remarks under BA headings relating to external polices (Title B7) in order to clarify the use of the technical assistance system for phasing out the technical assistance offices (TAOs). During the procedure the Commission proposed a further technical adjustment to headings B7-541 and B7-030A concerning the amounts in the remarks as follows: -heading B7-514A: replacement of the amount of EUR 200.000 by EUR 1.200.000, and; -heading B7-030A: replacement of the amount of EUR 1.745.000 by EUR 2.400.000. This letter of amendment is budgetarily neutral. On 6 December 2002, the Council established Letter of Amendment No 3 to the draft budget for the financial year 2003 as set out in the technical annex to the explanatory memorandum.�