Translation of "Early warning and crop yield forecasting " (English → French) :

14. Underlines that Parliament, the Council and the Commission have committed to avoiding the future build-up of an unsustainable backlog of outstanding payment claims at year's end, while fully respecting and implementing the agreements reached as part of the multiannual financial framework and of the annual budgetary procedures; reiterates the need, in this regard, to closely and actively monitor the development of this backlog; reiterates its concern that the specificities of the payment cycles put additional pressure on the level of payment appropriations, especially at the end of the MFF; reminds the Commission of its commitment, in the joint statement on a payment plan, to develop its medium- and long-term ...[+++]forecasting tools and to set up an early warning system, with the aim of presenting these first payment forecasts in July, so that the budgetary authority can take duly informed decisions in the future;

The Commission’s proposal concerns the agro-meteorological system utilised to prepare the crop yields forecast and to monitor the development of crops within the European Union.

The concept here entails supplying information about land use and the condition of the ground or crops, in order to forecast crop yields and, at the same time, to manage agricultural markets and produce econometric models.

Natural hazards: improvement of forecasting and integrated hazards — vulnerability — and risk assessments for disasters related to geological hazards (such as earthquakes, volcanoes, tsunamis) and climate (such as storms, droughts, floods, forest fires, landslides, avalanches and other extreme events) and their impact; development of early warning systems and improve prevention, mitigation and management strategies, also within a multi-risk approach.

25. Has decided to increase the payment appropriations in heading 2 to better reflect Member States' forecasts and to take account of the level of old outstanding commitments, payments for the current year, enlargement-related requirements and the outstanding commitments situation concerning the previous period; invites the Commission to present a fresh estimate of what is needed for 2004, including for completion of 1994-1999 payments ; invites the Commission also to examine the extent to which 1994-1999 commitments are still valid; urges that new control tools be developed and used without delay to carry out effective monitoring and ...[+++] reporting, particularly on the decommitment of payments, on a quarterly basis, and thus enhance implementation of structural operations: improvement and harmonisation of Member State payment forecasting methods, readiness and early-warning indicators and performance indicators; calls furthermore on the Commission to draw up an amending budget should the amounts earmarked prove insufficient to enable the budget to be implemented properly and, in particular, to enable outstanding commitments to be cleared;

13. Confirms its willingness to review the agriculture forecast in October 2000 and considers it inappropriate to reduce the ceiling of heading 1 for the 2001 budget before a clear situation of market forecasts is available; reminds that the Early Warning Paper No 5/2000 shows an increase of expenditure in 7 sectors;