CHAPTER 2

The appropriations entered in the budget of the Union body shall be authorised for a financial year which shall run from 1 January to 31 December. The budget of the Union body shall contain non-differentiated appropriations and, where justified by operational needs, differentiated appropriations. Differentiated appropriations shall consist of commitment appropriations and payment appropriations. Commitment appropriations shall cover the total cost of the legal commitments entered into during the financial year. Payment appropriations shall cover payments made to honour the legal commitments entered into in the financial year or preceding financial years. The revenue of the Union body referred to in Article 6 shall be entered in the accounts for the financial year on the basis of the amounts collected during that financial year. The revenue of the Union body shall give rise to an equivalent amount of payment appropriations. The appropriations authorised for a financial year shall be used solely to cover expenditure committed and paid in that financial year, and to cover amounts due against commitments from preceding financial years. Commitments shall be entered in the accounts on the basis of the legal commitments entered into up to 31 December. Payments shall be entered in the accounts for a financial year on the basis of the payments effected by the accounting officer by 31 December of that year. The appropriations entered in the budget of the Union body may be committed with effect from 1 January, once the budget of the Union body has been definitively adopted. Appropriations which have not been used by the end of the financial year for which they were entered shall be cancelled. However, they may be carried over, but only to the following financial year, by a decision taken by 15 February by the management board or, where the constituent act allows it, by the executive board in accordance with paragraphs 3 and 4 or they may be carried over automatically in accordance with paragraph 5. Appropriations relating to staff expenditure may not be carried over. Differentiated commitment appropriations and non-differentiated appropriations not yet committed at the end of the financial year may be carried over in respect of: amounts corresponding to commitment appropriations; amounts corresponding to non-differentiated appropriations relating to building projects, for which most of the preparatory stages of the commitment procedure have been completed by 31 December. The preparatory stage of the commitment procedure shall be specified in the rules implementing the financial regulation of each Union body. Such amounts may be committed up to 31 March of the following year, or up to 31 December of the following year for amounts relating to building projects. Payment appropriations may be carried over in respect of amounts needed to cover existing commitments or commitments linked to commitment appropriations carried over, where the payment appropriations provided for in the relevant budget lines for the following financial year are not sufficient to cover requirements. The Union body concerned shall first use the appropriations authorised for the current financial year and shall not use the appropriations carried over until the former are exhausted. Non-differentiated appropriations corresponding to obligations duly contracted at the end of the financial year shall be carried over automatically to the following financial year only. Appropriations carried over which have not been committed by 31 March of year N+1 shall be automatically cancelled and shall be identified in the accounts. Carry-over of assigned revenue referred to in Article 23, and of appropriations not used and available at 31 December arising from such revenue, shall comply with the following rules: external assigned revenue shall be carried over automatically and shall be fully used by the time all the operations relating to the programme or action to which it is assigned have been carried out; external assigned revenue received during the last year of the programme or action may be used in the first year of the succeeding programme or action; internal assigned revenue shall be carried over for one year only, with the exception of internal assigned revenue defined in point (f) of Article 23(3), which shall be carried over automatically. By 1 June of the year N+1 at the latest, the Union body shall inform the Commission about the implementation of the assigned revenue carried over. Where appropriations are decommitted in any financial year after that in which the appropriations were entered in the budget of the Union body as a result of total or partial non-implementation of the actions for which they were earmarked, the appropriations concerned shall be cancelled. As from 15 October of each year, routine administrative expenditure may be committed in advance against the appropriations provided for the following financial year. Such commitments shall not, however, exceed one quarter of the appropriations decided by the management board on the corresponding budget line for the current financial year. They shall not apply to new expenditure of a kind not yet approved in principle in the last budget of the Union body duly adopted. Expenditure which shall be paid in advance, for example rents, may give rise to payments from 1 December onwards to be charged to the appropriations for the following financial year. In this case, the limit referred to in paragraph 1 shall not apply. If the budget of the Union body has not been definitively adopted at the beginning of the financial year, the rules set out in paragraphs 2 to 6 shall apply. Commitments and payments may be made within the limits laid down in paragraph 3. Commitments may be made per chapter up to a maximum of one quarter of the total appropriations authorised in the relevant chapter of the previous financial year plus one twelfth for each month which has elapsed. The limit of the appropriations provided for in the statement of estimates of revenue and expenditure shall not be exceeded. Payments may be made monthly per chapter up to a maximum of one twelfth of the appropriations authorised in the relevant chapter of the preceding financial year. That sum shall not, however, exceed one twelfth of the appropriations provided for in the same chapter in the statement of estimates of revenue and expenditure. The appropriations authorised in the relevant chapter of the preceding financial year, as specified in paragraphs 2 and 3, shall be understood as referring to the appropriations voted in the budget of the Union body, including by amending budgets, and after adjustment for the transfers made during that financial year. At the request of the director, if the continuity of action by the Union body and management needs so require, the management board, may authorise expenditure in excess of one provisional twelfth but not exceeding the total of four provisional twelfths, except in duly justified cases, both for commitments and for payments over and above those automatically made available in accordance with paragraphs 2 and 3. The additional twelfths shall be authorised in full and shall not be divisible. If, for a given chapter, the authorisation of four provisional twelfths granted in accordance with paragraph 5 is not sufficient to cover the expenditure necessary to avoid a break in continuity of action by the Union body in the area covered by the chapter in question, authorisation may exceptionally be given to exceed the amount of the appropriations entered in the corresponding chapter of the budget of the Union body of the preceding financial year. The management board shall act in accordance with the procedures provided for in paragraph 5. However, the overall total of the appropriations available in the budget of the Union body of the preceding financial year or in the draft budget of the Union body, as proposed, may in no circumstances be exceeded.

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Source: EUR-Lex (Cellar) · retrieved 2026-11-01 · Text as adopted (Official Journal); later amendments are not incorporated in this text.