Brussels, 24/10/2003 (Agence Europe) - The European Parliament, which, on Thursday, approved an increase of EUR 1.4 billion in payment appropriations for Structural Funds in the draft 2004 budget (see yesterday's EUROPE, p.8), devoted a specific report to the budget for this policy. The report by Italian national Giovanni Pittela (Democratici di sinistra) adopted in plenary on Wednesday shows the Parliament's concern regarding the low rate of use of funding available for Structural Funds and about the reduction proposed by the European Commission for the 2004 budget. The Parliament "expresses its concern about the worsening of the situation of unpaid commitments" which have increased 41% over the last budgetary periods. It notes that the low rate of credit and payment implementation at the end of the financial period 2000 had grown still worse on 31 December 2001 and that the modest improvement noted at the end of the 2002 financial period was not confirmed on 30 April 2003, a date to which the Pittella report refers.
On the matter of implementing programmes for the current period, the European Parliament stresses its attachment for the n+2 rule whereby "funding that is not used two years after it has been committed is cancelled". It is concerned about a derogation granted by the Commission end 2002 which allowed advances granted by Member States when counting requests for reimbursement of the year to be included. The EP now urges the Commission to be vigilant so that this derogation does not become a way of circumventing obligations arising from the N+2 rule, thus making it more difficult to reabsorb the commitments unpaid. Finally, the EP stresses that the budget proposed by the Commission for 2004 is "insufficient for guaranteeing a significant fall in unpaid commitments in 2004".