“The improvement in budgetary management thanks to the new financial regime in force since 2003 is now producing its first results”. The EU Commissioner for the Budget, Dalia Grybauskaité, emphasized in these terms the data she described to the press concerning EU budgetary expenditures for 2004. This is the first time since 1997 that Brussels has succeeded in spending 99% of the credits committed, with a positive record of just over one billion Euros unused, equivalent to 1% of the total. The exceptional level of effective expenditure (which was 94.1% in 2003 and 92.2% in 2002) is especially due to better capacity for appropriation and expenditure in the sectors of common agricultural policy (99.25%) and structural funds (99.30%), as well as a growth of supplementary funds coming from third countries of the European Economic Zone (Norway, Iceland and Switzerland in particular) in the form of contributions for participation in EU programmes. The main consequence of the positive trend in the EU budget is a reduction in the contribution due from member states for the EU budget for 2005, whose amount will be defined by the Commission by June.
