PURPOSE: to present amending letter No 2 to the draft general budget 2012 as regards the establishment plans of the European Parliament, the European Council and Council, the Commission, the European Economic and Social Committee, the Committee of the Regions and the European Ombudsman.
BACKGROUND: on 30th June 2011 the negotiations with Croatia were closed. Signature of the Accession treaty and Croatian referendum are both expected to take place in the second half of 2011 or first half of 2012. The ratification process by the Parliaments of all 27 EU Member States is expected to be concluded by the end of June 2013 allowing for an entry into force and accession of Croatia to the European Union to take place on 1 July 2013 as proposed by the Commission.
The Commission provided the two arms of the budgetary authority with a Communication on the financial package for the accession negotiations with Croatia5 including indicative estimates of additional administration costs for all Institutions up to 2013. The European Parliament and the Council are the only Institutions which already requested and obtained additional posts and/or appropriations linked to this enlargement in the budget 2011.
When presenting its draft budget for the financial year 2012, the Commission announced that, since the date of future accessions remained unknown, its statement of estimates for 2012 did not include any request for additional resources linked to enlargement. For the sake of consistency, it also invited other Institutionsnot to include the additional resources required for the Croatian accession in their statement of estimates, announcing that this issue would be better dealt with in an amending letter once a decision on the accession date was taken.
Accordingly, based on the revised statement of estimates received from the Institutions, the Commission presents this amending letter No 2 to the Draft Budget 2012 (AL 2/2012) to integrate the budgetary implications of Croatia's accession in their respective administrative expenditure.
CONTENT: this amending letter addresses the most urgent needs before accession; remaining needs will be covered as from the draft budget 2013.
The total appropriations requested by the European Parliament, the European Council and Council, the Commission, the European Economic and Social Committee, the Committee of the Regions and the European Ombudsman in this amending letter No 2 to the Draft Budget 2012 amount to EUR 13.1 million.
The requested credits are necessary to cover expenditure for additional human resources that will carry out preparatory work in the linguistic and legal field relating to the enlargement to Croatia.
Appropriations shall also:
In total, 78 new establishment plan posts are requested by the European Parliament, the Commission, the European Economic and Social Committee, the Committee of the Regions and the European Ombudsman.
However, corresponding appropriations are only requested for 14 posts, since neither the Parliament (62 new posts) nor the European Ombudsman (2 posts) do request any appropriations for their respective new posts.
Moreover, appropriations for 117 other agents (contract agents and seconded national experts) are requested until full membership of Croatia as of 1 July 2013.