92001E0938

WRITTEN QUESTION E-0938/01

by Jonas Sjöstedt (GUE/NGL) to the Commission

(28 March 2001)

Subject: Faster payment of its bills by the Commission

One topic considered in The Eurocrats, a Danish TV programme broadcast on Swedish television on11 February 2001, was the length of time the Commission takes to pay its bills for various projects. According to the report, not even four out of 10 invoices are paid on time, one example being an invoice submitted to the Commission for an environmental project in Ireland. It took eight Commission staff to scrutinise the invoice and sixty days to pay it.

Many small undertakings have bills unpaid by the Commission and are forced to wait far too long for payment. Part of the problem is that so many Commission staff have to verify each bill submitted.

What does the Commission intend to do to establish routines to speed up the payment of invoices and to reduce the manpower used to scrutinise them?

Answer given by Mrs Schreyer on behalf of the Commission

(3 July 2001)

The Commission set a target in 1991 that payments should be made within 60 days of the receipt of a valid request for payment. Since 1997 it has paid interest on late payments.

In 2000, 74 % of payments were made within the 60 day limit. The Commission's aim, as stated in Action 10 in Part II of the White Paper Reforming the Commission(1) adopted on 1 March 2000, is to make 95 % of its payments within this limit by 2002.

The Commission has addressed the question of payment times on a number of occasions, most recently in July 2000. On this occasion it decided on a number of measures aimed at speeding up the payment of invoices. Neither the Commission nor outside consultants identified, however, excessive number of staff to scrutinise invoices as a cause of late payment.

Some of the Commission's measures will have the effect, nevertheless, of improving routines and reducing the number of staff involved in scrutinising invoices.

These include:

- the clarification of the terms of the contracts; this includes laying down the particulars that must be included in contracts and ensuring that technical annexes setting out what the contractor is to deliver to the Commission at each stage of a project are drawn up with precision and can be verified by both parties;

- the simplification of financial and procedural provisions in the contracts; this includes the simplification of financial clauses and reduction of the number of supporting documents to be produced for payment requests under contracts which are based wholly or partly on procedures for the reimbursement of costs, by setting standard amounts for certain categories of expenditure such as travel expenses;

- the improvement of Information technology (IT) tools and procedures; this includes the provision of a common system for recording invoices received and monitoring their processing for payment.

(1) COM(2000) 200 final.