1. Each year, the Governing Board, on the basis of a draft drawn up by the Director, shall produce an estimate of revenue and expenditure for the Agency for the following financial year. This estimate, which shall include a draft establishment plan, shall be forwarded by the Governing Board to the Commission by 31 March at the latest.
2. The estimate shall be forwarded by the Commission to the European Parliament and the Council (hereinafter referred to as the budgetary authority) together with the preliminary draft general budget of the European Union.
3. The Commission shall examine the estimate, taking account of the priorities it has agreed and the overall financial guidelines for Community assistance for the reconstruction of Serbia and Montenegro and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.
It shall establish on this basis, within the proposed limits of the overall amount to be made available for Community assistance to Serbia and Montenegro and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, the indicative annual contribution for the budget of the Agency.
4. On the basis of the estimate, the Commission shall enter in the preliminary draft general budget of the European Union the estimates it deems necessary for the establishment plan and the amount of the subsidy to be charged to the general budget, which it shall place before the budgetary authority in accordance with Article 272 of the Treaty.
5. The budgetary authority shall authorise the appropriations for the subsidy to the Agency.
The budgetary authority shall adopt the establishment plan for the Agency.
6. The budget of the Agency shall be adopted by the Governing Board. It shall become final following final adoption of the general budget of the European Union. Where appropriate, it shall be adjusted accordingly.
7. The Governing Board shall, as soon as possible, notify the budgetary authority of its intention to implement any project which may have significant financial implications for the funding of its budget, in particular any projects relating to property such as the rental or purchase of buildings. It shall inform the Commission thereof.
Where a branch of the budgetary authority has notified its intention to deliver an opinion, it shall forward its opinion to the Governing Board within a period of six weeks from the date of notification of the project.
8. In the interests of budgetary transparency, funds from sources other than the general budget of the European Union shall be shown separately in the Agency's revenue. In the expenditure, administrative and staff costs shall be clearly separate from operating costs for the programmes referred to in the first indent of Article 2(3).]
Textual Amendments