2002 ECSC operating budget

PURPOSE : to establish the draft operating budget of the European Coal and Steel Community for 2002. CONTENT : the budgetary approach defined in the present draft budget is to be included in the overall context of the expiration of the ECSC Treaty. As in 2001, the budgetary year 2002 is based on a hypothesis of the ECSC zero levy rate. Thus, the ECSC's current resources derive from the net balance, miscellanous revenue, cancelled commitments and finally from the provision for financing the ECSC operating budget. The net balance for the financial year 2002 is estimated at EUR 31 million. This estimation takes into consideration the volume of investments and foreseeable changes in interest rates. The various resources relate to paying back debts evaluated at around EUR 1 million for the year 2002. The estimated amount of the cancellations to be operated on the commitments which shall probably not give rise to cancellation is EUR 17 million. Lastly, it will be necessary, in order to balance the budget, to resort to the limit of EUR 102,8 million to the provision constitued as a precaution in order to compensate the suppression of levy. As a consequence, the ECSC's operational budget for the year 2002, is laid down as follows: - EUR 2,8 million for administrative expenditure; - EUR 7,7 million for social measures. From this moment, EUR 48 million concerning traditional aid for redeployment and EUR 29 million for the section on social measures - coal. It should be noted that the indicative breakdown for aid for redeployment is EUR 31 million for coalworkers and EUR 17 million for steelworkers; - EUR 72 million for aid for research, of which EUR 52 million for steel and EUR 20 million for coal. The financial breakdown for research which prevailed in 2001 (71% steel, 29% coal), shall be slightly amended (72% for steel, 28% for coal). This will enable the objective, accepted by the Council, for the allocation of finances beyond 2002 (72,8% steel, 27,2% coal) to be progressively reached. In addition, the indicative amounts for research projects with an impact on technical measures to combat harmful effects at the workplace and around steel plants shall be in the order of EUR 4 million, with regard to the amounts for the research in the field of industrial hygiene and mine safety, this shall be set at EUR 3 million. The ECSC draft operational budget for the year 2002 established on this basis shall rise to EUR 151,8 million. �