Strasbourg, 13/03/2001 (Agence Europe) -On Tuesday, the European Commission adopted a draft decision on changes to the financial perspectives in relation to the conditions for the implementation of the Community budget. This concerns transferring over the coming years (until 2006) a total of EUR 6.15 billion, which a delay in the adopting of certain structural fund programme did not allow to use in 2000, nor to postpone to 2001. Out of the EUR 26.297 billion in grants for the structural funds in 2000, the under-implementation corresponds to EUR 14.189 billion (8.9 billion for the Objective 1 programme; 3.5 billion for Objective 2; 18.5 million for FIGF; 1.7 billion for Community initiatives). Through a transfer of 8.037 billion from the 2001 budget, the Commission proposes to allocate EUR 6.12 billion to the budgets for 2002 to 2006.
EUROPE recalls that in the context of the procedure stemming from the interinstitutional agreement of 1999, the two branches of the budgetary authority undertook to authorise this kind of transfer.