Amending and supplementary budget 6/2002: frontloading exercise for the 2004 enlargement

PURPOSE : to present the Preliminary Draft Supplementary and Amending budget No 6 to the budget for 2002. CONTENT : at the conciliation meeting in July the budgetary authority decided not to use the flexibility instrument for heading 5 to cover the additional requirements in 2003 resulting from preparations for the forthcoming enlargement. These additional requirements had been announced in the two reports by the Secretaries-General and were subsequently confirmed in the various institutions' statements of estimates. Instead, the budgetary authority encouraged the institutions to carry out a "frontloading" exercise. The purpose of this operation is to collect the appropriations remaining available for 2002 and transfer them to the budget lines where they can be used to bring forward to 2002 the expenditure initially planned for 2003. The appropriations for these budget lines in the 2003 budget will then be reduced by the amount brought forward to 2002. The margin resulting from this reduction in 2003 will then cover the requirements which cannot be covered in any other way under the current heading 5 ceiling. This relates in particular to the 500 outside staff which the Commission has requested from the budgetary authority to prepare for enlargement. The operation will also provide the European Parliament with additional appropriations in 2003 to pursue its policy of early repayment on buildings. It will increase the final margin for heading 5 in 2003, boosting the institutions' capacity to cope with unforeseen requirements which might arise in 2003, a decisive year for enlargement preparations. The purpose of this preliminary draft supplementary and amending budget (PDSAB) is to redeploy the appropriations which will not be used in 2002 to budget lines in which expenditure can be brought forward. The use of a PDSAB rather than transfers is largely due to the interinstitutional nature of the operation. Some institutions are also using this PDSAB to make internal transfers within their Section. These transfers are not linked directly to the frontloading exercise, but form apart of the development of multiannual programming of some of the expenditure linked with preparations for enlargement.�