Convention on the future of the European Union: 2002 discharge of the financing Fund

PURPOSE : to present the European Convention's revenue and expenditure account and balance sheet for the financial year 2002. CONTENT : in a letter addressed to the European Parliament, the Presidency of the European Convention on the Future of the Europe has enclosed the revenue and expenditure account and the balance sheet for the financial year 2002. This document shows that on 31.12.2002, an amount of EUR 3.542 million was entered in the Convention's balance sheet. This document states that the Convention's budget, which was established before the Convention started work and without a clear indication of how it would operate, was only partially implemented. This was partly due to the cooperation and flexibility of the institutions contributing to the financial of the Convention, which provided it with both the human and the material resources and the infrastructure indispensable for it to function properly, and to the fact that Governments and national Parliaments were willing to cover the expenditure incurred by their own representatives; and partly to the strict economics and monitoring measures applied in the daily management of the activities of the Convention and its Secretariat The document also highlights that the appropriations under Title 2 (Operating expenditure) and even more so Title 10 (Contingency reserve) were only implemented to a very small extent: the Convention will not in fact complete its work until March 2003 as originally foreseen, but later in 2003, which means that the considerable sums included in the Budget for the translation and publication of the final texts have not been used during the financial year 2002. The budgetary document highlights in particular that the result of the budget implementation is limited at EUR 33.835 (Line 140000 of budget heading "Justification of balances as at 31.12.2002"). Faced with this situation, the Secretaries-General of the institutions contributing to the financing of the Convention agreed in October 2002 with the Secretary-General of the Convention that all the appropriations not used in 2002, whether or not they were the subject of a financial commitment, would be carried over and used for expenditure relating to 2003. These amounts are as follows: - an amount of EUR 104.043 shall be carried over automatically (Line 444000 of the heading "Justification of balances as at 31.12.2002); - an amount of EUR 3.401.616 shall be carried over by decision (Line 444001 of the heading "Justification of balances as at 31.12.2002). The document makes clear that the Convention Secretariat will ensure that it exhausts the appropriations carried over from financial year 2002 before it makes any calls for funds from the 2003 Budget - which was calculated taking these special circumstances into account.�