Brussels, 24/02/2011 (Agence Europe) - On Thursday 24 February 2011, the department of EU Budget Commissioner Janusz Lewandowski updated a memorandum about implementation of the EU budget for 2010, showing that 99.7% of the budget commitments were implemented in 2010 (€137.7 billion) along with 97.7% of payment appropriations (€117 billion).
In absolute terms, the implementation rate for the 2010 budget is 8.5% higher than for the 2009 budget. The budget department at the European Commission says that while this is a good result overall, some areas still need to be improved. Some programmes used up all their budget or even exceeded it by using budget transfers. Cohesion Policy had the highest implementation rate and the regional and cohesion funds used €2 billion more than their allocation. There were lower implementation rates for the European Social Fund, the European Rural Development Fund, the Competitiveness and Innovation Programme, the European Fisheries Fund and the Pre-Accession Instrument.
There can be several reasons for under-implementation, like stricter financial rules or member states being slow to use EU funding. (L.C./transl.fl)