Article 38
1. The authorising officer shall be responsible for implementing revenue and expenditure in accordance with the principles of sound financial management and for ensuring that the requirements of legality and regularity are complied with. 2. To implement expenditure, the authorising officer shall make budget commitments and legal commitments, shall validate expenditure and authorise payments and shall undertake the preliminaries for the implementation of appropriations. 3. Implementation of revenue shall comprise drawing up estimates of amounts receivable, establishing entitlements to be recovered and issuing recovery orders. It shall involve waiving established entitlements where appropriate. 4. The authorising officer shall put in place, in compliance with the minimum standards adopted by the Management Board on the basis of the standards laid down by the Commission for its own department and having due regard to the risks associated with the management environment and the nature of the action financed, the organisational structure and the internal management and control systems and procedures suited to the performance of his/her duties, including where appropriate ex post verifications. The authorising officer shall establish within his/her departments an expertise and advice function designed to help him/her control the risks involved in his/her activities. 5. Before an operation is authorised, the operational and financial aspects shall be verified by members of staff other than the one who initiated the operation. Initiation and the ex ante and ex post verification of an operation shall be separate functions. 6. The authorising officer shall conserve the supporting documents relating to operations carried out for a period of five years from the date of the decision granting discharge in respect of implementation of the budget. Personal data contained in supporting documents shall be deleted where possible when those data are not necessary for budgetary discharge, control and audit purposes. In any event, as concerns the conservation of traffic data, the provisions of Article 37(2) of Regulation (EC) 45/2001 shall be observed.