Article 22

F1The Commission, as part of the procedure for adopting the general budget, shall send the agency’s statement of estimates to the budgetary authority and propose the amount of the subsidy for the agency and the number of staff it considers that the agency needs. The Commission shall provide the draft establishment plan of the agency and an estimate of the number of contract staff expressed in full-time equivalent for which appropriations are proposed.

The agency's operating budget may not be adopted definitively until the general budget of the European Union has been finally adopted in accordance with the procedure provided for in Article 13 of Regulation (EC) No 58/2003.

The budgetary authority shall adopt the establishment plan of all the agencies and any subsequent amendment thereto in accordance with Article 24. F2The establishment plan shall be published in an Annex to Section III — Commission — of the general budget.

Any amendment to the budget, including the establishment plan, shall be the subject of an amending budget adopted by the same procedure as the initial budget, subject to Articles 18 and 24.