Financial Regulation: implementation procedure (amend. Regulation (Euratom, ECSC, EC) No 3418/93)

PURPOSE : to adopt a draft Commission Regulation (EURATOM, ECSC, EC) amending Commission Regulation 3418/93 laying down detailed rules for the implementation of certain provisions of the Financial Regulation of 21 December 1977. CONTENT : in accordance with Article 139 of the Financial Regulation, this draft will be adopted by the Commission in consultation with Parliament and the Council and after obtaining the opinion of the other institutions. As regards the substance, the reasons for the specific amendments can be summarised as follows: - provisions on the evaluation of projects and operations must be introduced to comply with the principles of sound financial management; - all references to the ecu need to be replaced by references to the euro; - the rate of the euro against all the currencies which the institutions use in the implementation of the budget should be determined by the Commission on the basis of the reference exchange rates published by the European Central Bank and not by the Commission's accounting officer; - the notion of "confusion or conflict of interests" in the context of budget implementation needs to be defined and the consequences of any such confusion or spelled out; - the transparency of subcontracted operations must be guaranteed; - a new provision on the validation of payments by the accounting officer should be introduced in view of the development of integrated computer systems; - the procedure for creating imprest accounts and appointing imprest administrators should be amended to give the authorising officer the power of initiative and the accounting officer the power of decision. Imprest administrators must be required to have specific qualifications appropriate to the function; - the principles governing the performance of internal auditing need to be set out; - a number of the provisions in Title VII (Commitment of expenditure) should be amended to ensure that legal commitments correspond to accounting commitments; - the provisions relating to contracts must be grouped together and rationalised to bring them into line with the Council directives; - to ensure that inventories give a true and fair view, the accounts must record changes in value by writing down the value of assets as necessary; - in accordance with the principle of prudence, the accounting officers must also constitute provisions for liabilities and charges; - the provisions to advances in respect of activities conducted by the JRC on behalf of third parties should be deleted since these advances no longer exist since the 1995 budget. The provision relating to the existence of the ACPC-JRC should also be deleted. �