Commission Regulation (EC) No 883/2006 of 21 June 2006 laying down detailed rules for the application of Council Regulation (EC) No 1290/2005 as regards the keeping of accounts by the paying agencies, declarations of expenditure and revenue and the conditions for reimbursing expenditure under the EAGF and the EAFRD
Modified by
Commission Regulation (EC) No 1305/2007of 7 November 2007amending Regulation (EC) No 883/2006 laying down detailed rules for the application of Council Regulation (EC) No 1290/2005 as regards the keeping of accounts by the paying agencies, declarations of expenditure and revenue and the conditions for reimbursing expenditure under the EAGF and the EAFRD, 307R1305, November 8, 2007
Commission Regulation (EC) No 114/2008of 6 February 2008amending Regulation (EC) No 883/2006 laying down detailed rules for the application of Council Regulation (EC) No 1290/2005 as regards the keeping of accounts by the paying agencies, declarations of expenditure and revenue and the conditions for reimbursing expenditure under the EAGF and the EAFRD, 308R0114, February 7, 2008
Commission Regulation (EC) No 883/2006of 21 June 2006laying down detailed rules for the application of Council Regulation (EC) No 1290/2005 as regards the keeping of accounts by the paying agencies, declarations of expenditure and revenue and the conditions for reimbursing expenditure under the EAGF and the EAFRDTHE COMMISSION OF THE EUROPEAN COMMUNITIES,Having regard to the Treaty establishing the European Community,Having regard to Council Regulation (EC) No 1290/2005 of 21 June 2005 on the financing of the common agricultural policyOJ L 209, 11.8.2005, p. 1. Regulation as amended by Regulation (EC) No 320/2006 (OJ L 58, 28.2.2006, p. 42)., and in particular Article 42 thereof,Whereas:(1)Regulation (EC) No 1290/2005 created a European Agricultural Guarantee Fund (EAGF) and a European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development (EAFRD) operating in the context of the shared management of expenditure and assigned revenue under the Community budget. It lays down general requirements and rules on the keeping of accounts and declarations of expenditure and revenue by the paying agencies, and the reimbursement of expenditure by the Commission. These rules and requirements should be clarified, distinguishing between the detailed rules of application common to the two Funds and those specific to each of them.(2)With a view to ensuring the proper management of the appropriations entered in the budget of the European Communities for the two Funds, it is essential that each paying agency should keep separate accounts relating exclusively to expenditure to be financed by the EAGF and by the EAFRD respectively. To this end, the accounts kept by the paying agencies should clearly show, for each of the two Funds, the expenditure effected and revenue assigned under Article 3(1), Article 4 and Article 34 respectively of Regulation (EC) No 1290/2005, and allow this expenditure and revenue to be linked to the funds made available to them under the Community budget.(3)The common agricultural policy is financed in euro, while allowing Member States which do not form part of the euro zone to make payments to beneficiaries in their national currency. To enable all the expenditure and revenue to be consolidated, it is therefore necessary to lay down that the paying agencies concerned must be able to provide data relating to the expenditure and revenue in both euro and the currency in which the expenditure was incurred and the revenue received.(4)To ensure sound management of financial flows, in particular because the Member States themselves mobilise the funds to cover the expenditure referred to in Article 3(1) of Regulation (EC) No 1290/2005 or receive an advance for that referred to in Article 4 of that Regulation before the Commission finances this expenditure in the form of monthly reimbursements of the expenditure effected, the Member States should collect the information necessary for these reimbursements and keep it at the disposal of the Commission as and when expenditure and revenue are effected or transmit it to the Commission at regular intervals. Management methods specific to the EAGF and to the EAFRD must be taken into account in this respect and the provision and transmission of information to the Commission by the Member States should be organised at intervals adapted to the management method of each Fund, without prejudice to the obligation of the Member States to keep the information drawn up for the purposes of proper monitoring of expenditure at the disposal of the Commission.(5)The general obligations as regards the keeping of accounts by the paying agencies cover detailed data required for the management and control of Community funds, the details of which are not required for the reimbursement of expenditure. The information and details relating to expenditure to be financed by the EAGF or the EAFRD which must be sent to the Commission at regular intervals should therefore be specified.(6)Notifications of information by the Member States to the Commission must enable it to use the information sent directly and as effectively as possible for the management of EAGF and EAFRD accounts and the relevant payments. To achieve this objective, all information to be made available or to be communicated between the Member States and the Commission should be sent electronically or in digital form. However, as transmission by other means may be considered necessary, the cases in which this obligation is justified should be laid down.(7)Under Article 8(1)(c)(i) of Regulation (EC) No 1290/2005, for measures relating to operations financed by the EAGF and the EAFRD, declarations of expenditure, which also act as payment requests, must also be sent to the Commission accompanied by the requisite information. To allow the Member States and the paying agencies to draw up these declarations of expenditure in accordance with harmonised rules, and to allow the Commission to take payment requests into consideration, the conditions under which this expenditure may be taken into account under the respective EAGF and EAFRD budgets and the rules that apply to entering expenditure and revenue in the accounts, in particular the assigned revenue and any corrections to be made, and to their actual declaration, should be laid down.(8)Under Article 4 of Council Regulation (EEC) No 1883/78 of 2 August 1978 laying down general rules for the financing of interventions by the European Agricultural Guidance and Guarantee Fund, Guarantee SectionOJ L 216, 5.8.1978, p. 1. Regulation as last amended by Regulation (EC) No 695/2005 (OJ L 114, 4.5.2005, p. 1)., the amount to be financed by an intervention measure is to be determined on the basis of the annual accounts drawn up by the paying agencies. That Regulation also lays down the rules and conditions governing these accounts. Following the abolition of the European Agricultural Guidance and Guarantee Fund (EAGGF) by Regulation (EC) No 1290/2005, and its replacement by the EAGF as regards the financing of these measures, the terms under which the financing of such measures by the EAGF fits into the system of declarations of expenditure and monthly payments should be made clear.(9)Under Article 15(4) of Regulation (EC) No 1290/2005, expenditure in October counts as being made in the month of October if effected between 1 and 15 October and in the month of November if effected from 16 to 31 October. However, as regards expenditure relating to public storage, all expenditure entered in the accounts in the month of October is taken into account in respect of financial year N + 1. Expenditure financed by the EAGF and resulting from public storage operations carried out in September should therefore be entered in the accounts not later than 15 October.(10)The exchange rates applicable must be laid down according to whether or not an operative event has been defined in the agricultural legislation. To avoid the application, by the Member States which do not form part of the euro zone, of different exchange rates in accounts of revenue received or aid paid to beneficiaries in a currency other than the euro, on the one hand, and in the declaration of expenditure drawn up by the paying agency, on the other, the Member States concerned should apply the same exchange rate in their declarations of expenditure under the EAGF as that used when collecting that revenue or making those payments to beneficiaries. Moreover, to simplify the administrative formalities as regards recoveries for more than one operation, a single exchange rate should apply when entering these recoveries into the accounts. This measure should, however, be limited to operations which took place before the date of application of this Regulation.(11)The Commission is to make payments at monthly or other regular intervals to the Member States on the basis of declarations of expenditure sent by the latter. It must, however, take into account the revenue received by the paying agencies on behalf of the Community budget. The conditions under which certain types of expenditure and revenue effected under the EAGF and the EAFRD are to be offset should therefore be laid down.(12)After approving the monthly payments, the Commission is to place at the disposal of the Member States the funds needed to cover expenditure to be financed by the EAGF and the EAFRD, in accordance with practical arrangements and conditions to be laid down on the basis of information communicated to the Commission by the Member States and the computer systems set up by the Commission.(13)If the Community budget has not been adopted by the beginning of the financial year, under the second subparagraph of Article 13(2) of Council Regulation (EC, Euratom) No 1605/2002 of 25 June 2002 on the Financial Regulation applicable to the general budget of the European CommunitiesOJ L 248, 16.9.2002, p. 1., payments may be made monthly per chapter to a maximum of one twelfth of the allotted appropriations in the chapter in question of the preceding financial year. To allocate the available appropriations fairly among the Member States, provision should be made for the monthly payments under the EAGF and the regular payments under the EAFRD to be made in this case as a percentage, laid down for each chapter, of the declarations of expenditure submitted by each Member State and for the balance not used in a given month to be reallocated in Commission decisions on subsequent monthly or regular payments.(14)Where, on the basis of the declarations of expenditure received from the Member States under the EAGF, the total amount of advance commitments which could be authorised under Article 150(3) of Regulation (EC, Euratom) No 1605/2002 is more than half of all corresponding appropriations for the current financial year, the Commission is required to reduce those amounts. For the sake of sound management, that reduction must be shared among all the Member States proportionally, on the basis of the declarations of expenditure received from them. To allocate the available appropriations fairly among the Member States, provision should be made for monthly payments under the EAGF to be made in this case as a percentage, laid down for each chapter, of the declarations of expenditure submitted by each Member State and for the balance not used in a given month to be reallocated in Commission decisions on subsequent monthly payments.(15)Community agricultural legislation includes, for the EAGF, deadlines for payment of aids to beneficiaries which must be complied with by Member States. All payments effected after those deadlines, and for which the delay in payment is unjustified, must be regarded as irregular expenditure, and therefore cannot be the subject of reimbursement by the Commission. However, in order to modulate the financial impact in proportion to the delay incurred in payment, provision should be made for the Commission to graduate the reduction in the payments according to the length of delay recorded. A fixed margin must be laid down, moreover, so that reductions are not applied where the delays in payment result from legal disputes.(16)As part of the reform of the common agricultural policy and the introduction of the single payment scheme, Member State compliance with the payment deadlines is vital to the proper application of the rules on financial discipline. Specific rules should therefore be laid down to help avoid, wherever possible, any risk of the annual appropriations available in the Community budget being exceeded.(17)Under Articles 17 and 27 of Regulation (EC) No 1290/2005 the Commission may reduce or temporarily suspend payments to the Member States if they do not meet the deadlines laid down for the payments or do not notify data relating to expenditure or information provided for in that Regulation to verify the consistency of such data. The same applies, as regards the EAFRD, if the Member States do not notify the information required under Council Regulation (EC) No 1698/2005 of 20 September 2005 on support for rural development by the European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development (EAFRD)OJ L 277, 21.10.2005, p. 1. and its implementing rules, including the mid-term evaluation report for the programmes. In this context, the implementing rules for these reductions and suspensions should be laid down for EAGF and EAFRD expenditure respectively.(18)Article 180 of Regulation (EC, Euratom) No 1605/2002 provides that negative agricultural expenditure is to be replaced from 1 January 2007 by revenue assigned, according to origin, to either appropriations for the EAGF or the EAFRD. Under Article 32(1) of Regulation (EC) No 1290/2005 the sums recovered by the paying agencies following the occurrence of irregularity or negligence are to be booked by them as assigned revenue. Some sums established following irregularities or reductions applied in the case of failure to comply with the environmental rules are comparable to the revenue relating to irregularities or negligence referred to in Article 32 of Regulation (EC) No 1290/2005 and should therefore be treated in a similar way to such revenue. Provision should therefore be made for the corresponding amounts to be entered in the accounts under the same terms as the assigned revenue coming directly from the irregularities or negligence referred to in that Article 32.(19)The expenditure co-financed by the Community budget and the national budgets as support for rural development under the EAFRD is based on programmes broken down by measure. It must therefore be monitored and entered into the accounts on this basis so that all operations can be identified by programme and by measure and so that it can be verified that there is an adequate match between the expenditure effected and the financial resources provided. In this context the elements to be taken into account by the paying agencies should be specified and it should be laid down, in particular, that the origin of public and Community funds must be clearly shown in the accounts in relation to the financing effected, and that the amounts to be recovered from beneficiaries and the amounts which have been recovered are identified and shown in relation to the original operations.(20)Where a payment or recovery operation is carried out in a national currency other than the euro, under rural development programmes financed by the EAFRD, the corresponding amounts must be converted into euro. Provision should therefore be made for a single exchange rate to be applied to all operations entered into the accounts in the course of a given month, to be used for the declarations of expenditure.(21)Forecasts of the amounts still to be funded by the EAFRD for a calendar year and estimates of funding requests for the following calendar year are required by the Commission for the purposes of its budgetary and financial management. The information in question must be sent to the Commission in sufficient time to enable it to meet its obligations, and in any event twice a year, not later than 31 January and 31 July each year.(22)To allow the Commission to validate the financing plan for each rural development programme, to provide for any changes to it and to carry out the necessary checks, certain information should be brought to its attention. To this end, each managing authority for the programmes must enter the required information into the EAFRD common computer system, to allow the Commission to determine, in particular, the maximum amount of the EAFRD contribution, its annual breakdown, a breakdown by priority and measure and the co-financing rates applicable for each priority. The terms on which the total amounts are to be registered in the common computer system should also be laid down.(23)The deadlines for drawing up the declarations of expenditure on operations under the EAFRD must be set by the Commission in accordance with Article 26(6) of Regulation (EC) No 1290/2005. In view of the specific characteristics of the accounting rules which apply to the EAFRD, the use of prefinancing and the financing of the measures by calendar year, provision should be made for this expenditure to be declared at intervals adapted to these specific conditions.(24)Exchanges of information and documents between the Commission and the Member States, and the provision and notification of information from the Member States to the Commission are generally carried out electronically or in digital form. In order to improve the way such exchanges of information under the EAGF and the EAFRD are dealt with and to extend their use, it is necessary to adapt the existing computer systems or set up new ones. Provision should be made for this to be done by the Commission and implemented after informing the Member States via the Committee on the Agricultural Funds.(25)The conditions under which information is processed by these computer systems and the form and content of documents which have to be communicated under Regulation (EC) No 1290/2005 have to be adjusted frequently in line with changes to the applicable rules or management requirements. Uniform presentation of the documents to be sent in by the Member States is also necessary. To achieve these objectives and to simplify procedures and ensure that the computer systems concerned can be made operational immediately, the form and content of the documents should be laid down on the basis of models, which should be adapted and updated by the Commission after informing the Committee on the Agricultural Funds.(26)The paying agencies are responsible for the management and control of the legality of EAGF and EAFRD expenditure. The data on financial transactions must therefore be communicated or entered in the computer systems and updated under the responsibility of the paying agency, by the paying agency itself or the body to which that function has been delegated, where applicable via the accredited coordinating body.(27)Certain documents or procedures provided for in Regulation (EC) No 1290/2005 and its implementing rules require the signature of an authorised person or the approval of a person at one or more of the stages of the procedure in question. In such cases, the computer systems set up for the communication of these documents must make it possible to identify each person unambiguously and provide reasonable assurance that the contents of the documents, including as regards the stages of the procedure, cannot be altered. This must apply, in particular, as regards the declarations of expenditure and the statement of assurance attached to the annual accounts referred to in Article 8(1)(c)(i) and (iii) of Regulation (EC) No 1290/2005 and the documents communicated by electronic means under these procedures.(28)The rules applicable to the communication of electronic and digitised documents have been laid down at Community level, as regards the means of their transmission, the conditions under which they are valid for the Commission’s purposes and the conditions for keeping such documents and for their integrity and legibility. Insofar as the shared management of the Community budget under the EAGF and the EAFRD concerns documents drawn up or received by the Commission or the paying agencies and the procedures put in place for the financing of the common agricultural policy, provision should be made for the application of Community legislation to the communication of electronic and digitised documents carried out under this Regulation and the periods for which electronic and digitised documents are to be kept should be laid down.(29)The communication of information by electronic means may prove impossible in certain situations. To resolve possible malfunctions in a computer system or deal with the absence of a stable connection, the Member State must be able to send the documents in another form, under conditions which should be laid down.(30)Under Article 39(1)(d) and (e) of Regulation (EC) No 1290/2005, the financial resources available in a Member State on 1 January 2007 following reductions in or cancellations of the amounts of payments which that Member State has made voluntarily, in accordance with Article 1 of Commission Regulation (EC) No 1655/2004 of 22 September 2004 laying down rules for the transition from the optional modulation system established by Article 4 of Council Regulation (EC) No 1259/1999 to the mandatory modulation system established by Council Regulation (EC) No 1782/2003OJ L 298, 23.9.2004, p. 3. or by way of a penalty, under Articles 3, 4 and 5 of Council Regulation (EC) No 1259/1999 establishing common rules for direct support schemes under the common agricultural policyOJ L 160, 26.6.1999, p. 113. Regulation repealed by Regulation (EC) No 1782/2003 (OJ L 270, 21.10.2003, p. 1)., must be used by that Member State to finance rural development measures. If Member States do not use the financial resources within a certain period, the corresponding amounts are to be repaid to the EAGF budget. In order to lay down the terms of application of these measures, rules must be laid down for the accounting and management of the amounts concerned by the paying agencies, and for taking them into account in Commission payment decisions.(31)Under Article 39(1)(a) of Regulation (EC) No 1290/2005, the Member States belonging to the European Union before 1 May 2004 may, in justified cases and under certain conditions laid down in that point, be authorised by the Commission to continue payments for rural development programmes for the period 2000 to 2006 until 31 December 2006. To allow the application of this derogation, the procedure to be followed, the deadlines to be met by the Member States and the terms for implementing it should be laid down.(32)Commission Regulation (EC) No 296/96 of 16 February 1996 on data to be forwarded by the Member States and the monthly booking of expenditure financed under the Guarantee Section of the Agricultural Guidance and Guarantee Fund (EAGGF) and repealing Regulation (EEC) No 2776/88OJ L 39, 17.2.1996, p. 5. Regulation as last amended by Regulation (EC) No 1607/2005 (OJ L 256, 1.10.2005, p. 12). and Commission Decision C/2004/1723 of 26 April 2004 on the form of documents to be transmitted by the Member States for entry in the accounts of expenditure financed by the EAGGF Guarantee SectionNotified on 26 April 2004, as last amended by Decision C/2005/3741, notified on 30 September 2005. should therefore be repealed.(33)The measures provided for in this Regulation are in accordance with the opinion of the Committee on the Agricultural Funds,HAS ADOPTED THIS REGULATION: