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Ultimate responsibility for implementing the budget lies with the European Commission. But in practice, some 80% of the budget is spent under what is known as 'shared management', with individual EU countries actually distributing funds and managing expenditure.
A set of checks and balances is in place to ensure the funds in question are managed properly and in accordance with the rules:
Up to 80% of the EU budget expenditure is managed by Member States under so-called shared management in areas such as agriculture, growth and employment aid to EU regions (European Structural and Investment Funds).
In agriculture, national paying agencies give formal assurance for the EU money they spend through annual management declarations. This has helped reduce the scope for errors.
Under the new rules of the Financial Regulation, national fund managers for structural and other EU funds under shared management will also have to issue annual management declarations that will be subject to independent audit.
Budget implementation may be:
DG Budget has an important role in budget adoptionand implementation:
Its financial activities are closely supervised and monitored.
Related information
EU budget implementation, in Public Finance, Part 5: Implementation of the Union's annual budget (pages 217-253, EN, PDF)