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1. The Commission shall implement the budget in any of the following ways:

(a) directly (direct management) as set out in Articles 125 to 156, by its departments, including its staff in the Union delegations under the authority of their respective Head of delegation, in accordance with Article 60(2), or through executive agencies as referred to in Article 69;

(b) under shared management with Member States (shared management) as set out in Articles 63 and 125 to 129;

(c) indirectly (indirect management) as set out in Articles 125 to 152 and 157 to 162, where this is provided for in the basic act or in the cases referred to in Article 58(2), points (a) to (d), by entrusting budget implementation tasks to:

(i) third countries or the bodies they have designated, as referred to in Article 161;

(ii) international organisations or their agencies, within the meaning of Article 159;

(iii) the European Investment Bank (the ‘EIB’) or the European Investment Fund (the ‘EIF’) or both of them acting as a group (the ‘EIB group’);

(iv) Union bodies referred to in Articles 70 and 71;

(v) public law bodies, including Member State organisations;

(vi) bodies governed by private law with a public service mission, including Member State organisations, to the extent that they are provided with adequate financial guarantees;

(vii) bodies governed by the private law of a Member State that are entrusted with the implementation of a public- private partnership and that are provided with adequate financial guarantees; (viii) bodies or persons entrusted with the implementation of specific actions in the CFSP pursuant to Title V of the TEU, and identified in the relevant basic act;

(ix) bodies established in a Member State, governed by the private law of a Member State or Union law and eligible to be entrusted, in accordance with sector-specific rules, with the implementation of Union funds or budgetary guarantees, to the extent that such bodies are controlled by bodies as set out in point (v) or (vi) and are provided with adequate financial guarantees in the form of joint and several liability by the controlling bodies or equivalent financial guarantees and which may be, for each action, limited to the maximum amount of the Union support. With regard to points (c)(vi) and (vii) of the first subparagraph, the amount of the financial guarantees required may be set out in the relevant basic act and be limited to the maximum amount of the Union contribution to the body concerned. In the case of multiple guarantors, the repartition of the amount of the total liability to be covered by the guarantees shall be specified in the contribution agreement, which may provide for the liability of each guarantor to be proportionate to the share of their respective contribution to the body.

2. For the purposes of direct management, the Commission may use the instruments referred to in Titles VII, VIII, IX, X and XII. For the purposes of shared management, the instruments for budget implementation shall be the ones provided for in sector-specific rules. For the purposes of indirect management, the Commission shall apply Title VI and, in the case of financial instruments and budgetary guarantees, Titles VI and X. The implementing entities shall apply the instruments for budget implementation set out in the contribution agreement concerned.

3. The Commission is responsible for budget implementation in accordance with Article 317 TFEU and shall not delegate those tasks to third parties, where such tasks involve a large measure of discretion implying political choices. The Commission shall not, through contracts in accordance with Title VII of this Regulation, outsource tasks involving the exercise of public authority and discretionary powers of judgement.