1997 discharge: EC general budget, 6th and 7th European Development Funds EDF

PURPOSE: to present the management account and the financial statement relating to budget operations in 1997 - section III - Commission (Vol I and II). CONTENT: this document presents a summary of the use of funding by the Commission in 1997, heading by heading. According to this document, the 1997 budgetary procedure came within the scope of the financial perspectives annexed to the interinstitutional agreement on budgetary discipline of 29/10/93, adapted in December 1994 following the enlargement of the Union to include Austria, Finland and Sweden. These financial perspectives were the subject, in 1996, of a technical adjustment and an adaptation to execution conditions. The Commission has furthermore proposed a revision of the financial perspectives for 1996 to 1999 in order to respond to new requirements, by giving greater importance to spending to stimulate growth, competitiveness and employment, without in any way increasing the overall ceiling of funding for commitments over the period as a whole. However, the Council stated on 14/10/96 that it was unable to form a qualified majority on this proposal. The technical adjustment of the financial perspectives, made in February 1996 on the basis of the most recently available macro-economic forecasts with regard to GNP and price development, enabled the funding ceiling for payments to be fixed at ECU 85.807 million, allowing a margin of 0.03% to remain under the own resources ceiling. Finally, with regard to the adaptation of the financial perspectives to execution conditions, the Commission notes that following the institutional trilogue, it was agreed that unused commitments under the structural funds from 1995 should be transferred to the years 1997, 1998 and 1999, at a level of ECU 380, 1000 and 693 million respectively. Un unused amount of ECU 11 million was furthermore transferred to 1997 under the cohesion fund. Taking account of this raising of the funding ceiling, the available margin under the own rsources ceiling was reduced to 0.02% of GNP in 1997. In respect of the execution of the budget as a whole, the Commission specifies that the credits for commitments authorised under the 1997 budget were executed or carried over to 1998 to a level of 96.7%, largely as a result of a raised rate of execution of budget headings 1 and 2 (agriculture and cohesion).�