Brussels, 20/07/2000 (Agence Europe) - The European Commission adopted the Communication from Commissioner Schreyer, which proposes to simplify and standardise Commission contracts so as to reduce the significant delays in payments made by its services (see EUROPE of 10/11 July, p.14). The aim that the Commission is setting itself is that by 2002, 95% of the payment are carried out in less than 60 days. The Commission had already set itself this aim in 1995, but is far from reaching it. In 1999, only 75.1% of the payments were made in less than 60 days, 14.9% between 60 and 90 days and 20% in more than 90 days. The Commission, to explain part of these delays, underlines that the number of financial transaction has doubled over the last 5 years.
To try and remedy this situation, the Commission decided to: 1) simplify the financial clauses of the contracts and reduce the volume of supporting documentation required, which will be clearly specified in the contracts, 2) starting from the principal that a request for payment must be addressed, and that the short payment time-limit from the receiving of the request (the practices presently vary according to the services), 3) prepare for July 2001 a common registration and follow-up of invoices system (as of September 2000, a "Sincom 2" accounting system should be made available to all the services), 4) consider to reduce the deadline to 45 days once the preliminary centralised visa is removed. In fact the Commission feels that the removal of this visa will enable to accelerate the procedure by 15 days…