“Better planning and constant improvement in the management of the EU budget, at all levels, produce concrete results. The member states now pay to the EU budget only the contributions that are really necessary”, said Dalia Grybauskaité, European Commissioner for financial and budgetary planning. She was commenting on the finding, as surprising as it is positive, that only 1% of the general budget of the European Union for 2005 – equivalent to just over one billion euros – was not used by the EU institutions and by the member states in the implementation of EU policies and programmes during the year. The most “virtuous” sector in terms of the take up of EU funds was undoubtedly that of structural funding and regional aid, where only 58 million euros (equivalent to 0.2%) remained of the budget of 32 billion euros in the coffers of Brussels, closely followed by agriculture with 0.3% of unspent funds against a total budget of almost 50 billion euros. External actions of the Union also performed well (3.5% of budget unspent). By contrast, in spite of a slight improvement over the previous year, the budget for pre-membership strategy remains in crisis: it registered an overall take up of funds equivalent to only 86.5%, also due to the delays in appropriations and payments by the national authorities concerned.
