| dc.description.abstract | The Council decisions establishing the various lending instrumentsof the European Communities require the Commission to inform the Council and Parliament each year of the use made of these instruments. As the appropriations allocated by the Council to the New Community Instrument (NCI) have been used up and the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) Treaty expired in 2002, no new lending activities took place under these instruments. Therefore, this report contains only information concerning the repayment of the respective loans (see the section 1.). As for lending activities outside the Community, the decisions adopted in 1997 and 20001require the Commission to inform the Council and Parliament on an annual basis of the situation regarding EIB loans guaranteed by the Union budget in Central and Eastern Europe, in the Mediterranean countries, in Latin America and Asia and in South Africa. These same obligations were extended in 1998 to the EIB’s loans to the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (Decision 98/348/EC) and to Bosnia and Herzegovina (Decision 98/729/EC), in 1999 to the loans to Turkey (Decision 99/786/EC), in 2000 to the loans to Croatia (Decision 2000/688/EC) and Turkey-SAP (Decision 2000/788/EC) and in 2001 to the loans to the Baltic regions of Russia (Decision 2001/777/EC) and to Serbia and Montenegro, the former Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (Decision 2001/778/EC). In order to meet these information requirements, this report describes the operations for each of the areas concerned. To complete the picture of lending activities, it also gives a brief summary of the macro-financial assistance provided by the Community to the countries of Central and Eastern Europe and of the interest subsidies and guarantees associated with Community loans. In addition, it provides information on Euratom’s lending activities. The tables on this report are published in a Commission Staff Working Paper. References to tables in the text refer to the Staff Working Paper. |
