1. The budget commitment is the operation reserving the appropriations necessary to cover subsequent payments to honour a legal commitment.
2. The legal commitment is the act whereby the authorising officer responsible enters into or establishes an obligation which results in a charge for the budget.
3. The budget commitment is individual when the beneficiary and the amount of the expenditure are known.
4. The budget commitment is global when at least one of the elements necessary to identify the individual commitment is still not known.
5. The budget commitment is provisional when it is intended to cover routine administrative expenditure and either the amount or the final beneficiaries are not definitively known. The provisional budget commitment shall be implemented either by the conclusion of one or more individual legal commitments giving rise to an entitlement to subsequent payments or, in exceptional cases relating to expenditure on staff management, directly by payments
1. In respect of any measure which may give rise to expenditure chargeable to the budget, the authorising officer responsible must first make a budget commitment before entering into a legal obligation with third parties.
2. Global budget commitments shall cover the total cost of the corresponding individual legal commitments concluded up to 31 December of year n +1 .
Individual legal commitments relating to individual or provisional budget commitments shall be concluded by 31 December of year n .
At the end of the periods referred to in the first and second subparagraphs, the unused balance of these budget commitments shall be decommitted by the authorising officer responsible.
3. The legal commitments entered into for actions extending over more than one financial year and the corresponding budget commitments shall, save in the case of staff expenditure, have a final date for implementation set in compliance with the principle of sound financial management.
Any parts of such commitments which have not been executed six months after that final date shall be decommitted in accordance with Article 11.
The amount of a budget commitment corresponding to a legal commitment for which no payment within the meaning of Article 67 has been made in a period of three years following the signing of the legal commitment shall be decommitted.
When adopting a budget commitment, the authorising officer responsible shall ensure that:
(a)
the expenditure has been charged to the correct item in the budget;
(b)
the appropriations are available;
(c)
the expenditure conforms to the Europol Financial Rules;
(d)
the principle of sound financial management is complied with.
