A paying unit is an organisational component of a ministry that carries out the actual transfer of money to the recipient once the managing authority has approved the payment request. The chain works as follows: the recipient submits a payment request together with supporting documents, the managing authority or intermediate body verifies the eligibility of the expenditure, forwards the approved amount to the paying unit, and the paying unit makes the payment from state budget funds earmarked for co-financing as well as from EU funds. The certifying authority then confirms the reported expenditure to the European Commission, which refunds it to the state budget. This division of roles is deliberate – whoever approves the expenditure does not pay it. For the recipient this has a practical consequence: the deadline for payment only starts running once the expenditure has been approved, and the most common cause of delay is not the payment itself but a request to supplement missing documents in the preceding step.
See also: Payment claim, Reimbursement, Managing Authority (MA).
