2001 discharge: EC general budget, Council

PURPOSE : to present the revenue and expenditure account and the balance sheet relating to the activities of the 2001 budget (Council). CONTENT : this document presents the amount of expenditure and the balance sheet of the other institutions of the Union (except the Commission) for the financial year 2001, in particular for the Council). The document shows that the Council's 2001 budget amounts to EUR 377.068.000 that is a limit of 98.98%. The year 2001 was marked by activities linked to the setting up of necessary structures to confront the new areas of competence stemming from both the Feira and the Nice Council conclusions, in particular in the field of common European security and defence policy (CESDP). In order to deal with this expenditure, the General Secretariat was obliged to ask for a supplementary and amending budget (SAB 2/2001) of a total amount of EUR 9.846 million. The strengthening of the Council's Secretariat General is marked by the increase to 51 posts (of politico-military expertise jobs with a view to the setting up of a civil structure, its task being to deal with civil aspects of management crisis and to assist the relevant organisations of the CESDP) and jobs in related services, in particular, the security service, communications and computing, which are in charge of supporting the entire structure. In addition, the SAB 2/2001 has enabled the costs of the infrastructure to be covered, more particularly telecommunications and information security as well as the seconded experts' expenses.�