Amending budget 3/2007: surplus from the 2006 financial year

The European Parliament adopted a resolution drafted by James Elles (EPP-ED, UK) and welcomed the positive development in budget implementation over the last few years. Parliament decided to accept Council's Draft amending budget No 3/2007 which aims to enter in the 2007 budget the surplus of the 2006 financial year, amounting to EUR 1 847 631 711.

In doing so, the European Parliament highlighted that under-spending of payment appropriations, compared to the years before, has decreased to EUR 949 899 477,07 (about 0.9 %) of the total EU 2006 budget. Compared with 2005, there have been considerable general improvements in the uptake of allocations in the fields of pre-accession strategy. However, there is still some room for improvement, especially in the field of agriculture, where the amount unused, compared with 2005, has gone up to EUR 426 million representing 0.85% of the total allowance (0.3 % in 2005).

Lastly, it called on the Commission to continue its efforts to fully implement the budget, which is even more important in view of the limited resources that will be available under the new financial framework 2007 – 2013.