The EU must give itself adequate budgetary means to achieve its policy aims – this is the spirit in which Parliament's delegation went to its budgetary conciliation meeting with the Council on 17 July.
The EU must give itself adequate budgetary means to achieve its policy aims – this is the spirit in which Parliament's delegation went to its budgetary conciliation meeting with the Council on 17 July. MEPs propose increasing the payments entered in the preliminary draft budget for 2009. Responding to the plan to fund agricultural aid to developing countries with unspent CAP money, they also demanded that the Commission comply with budgetary rules.
“We need an EU budget for our citizens”, declared Jutta Haug (PES, DE), EP rapporteur on the EU's 2009 general budget. “This means it is not sufficient to give only political answers. These answers need to be backed with the necessary financial resources, e.g. to tackle climate change, to ensure energy security and sustainable growth and to secure food aid”, she said, adding after the conciliation meeting that the cuts made by the Council are “unrealistic”.
Payments down Although Parliament and the Council, the two branches of the budgetary authority, disagree on funding, they nonetheless agree on the priorities: support for creating jobs, pursuing cohesion policy, promoting research into clean and efficient energies, defining a European energy policy to achieve security and independence, putting in place a European area of justice and a common integration policy, action in the Middle East, Kosovo and the Balkans, food aid and strengthening environmental measures in the development co-operation context and, of course, policies having a direct impact on citizens' daily lives.
MEPs doubt whether the amounts proposed by the Commission in the preliminary draft budget (PDB) will suffice to achieve these aims. They consider payment appropriations (€ 116.7 billion – down from €121.5 billion in the 2008 PDB) to be “extremely narrow” already, and the even lower amount proposed by the Council delegation (€114.9 billion) still less adequate.
External questions Heading 4 (“The EU as a global player”) will be the biggest stumbling block in negotiations between Parliament and the Council. The Commission itself has acknowledged that the appropriations entered in the PDB for Kosovo, the Middle East, food aid and macro-financial assistance will doubtless be insufficient.
For example, the Commission has entered only € 161 million in commitment appropriations and €100 million in payments for Palestine, down from €300 million and €200 million respectively in 2008. The Council delegation does propose an extra €100 million, “to anticipate the Commission's letter of amendment”, whilst admitting that this is not enough. However, these are only reserve commitment appropriations, which Parliament deems “unsatisfactory”.
Given that needs are growing and even the 2008 appropriations have turned out to be insufficient, MEPs consider these estimates unrealistic. Parliament's rapporteur for the 2008 budget, Mr Kyosti Virrankoski (ALDE, FI), pointed out that “in spring alone the initial amounts had to be increased by €190 million, collected from 13 different lines, always to the detriment of other policy aims”. Several amendments to the budget so far have increased spending for Palestine to € 340 million. Compared with previous budgets, which already chronically underfunded heading 4, the 2009 one is likely to offer even less room for manœuvre.
Fisheries and agricultural aid to developing countries Parliament's delegation stressed the absolute necessity, particularly in this pre-election period, of clearly and realistically stating the sources of funding for any decision that has budgetary implications.
In the absence of support from the Council, Parliament made a unilateral statement in which it reiterates that any funding of new measures must comply with the principles set out in the Financial Regulation and in the 2006 inter-institutional agreement.
Parliament is surprised, for example, by the latest Fisheries Council decision, which would release a € 600 million aid even though neither the source of the funding nor its legal basis are clearly established. To ensure that the budget is realistic and transparent, Parliament has also asked the Commission to evaluate the budgetary impact of political undertakings set out in the conclusions of the Council meeting of 19 and 20 June 2008.
On the fringe of the 2009 budget negotiations, MEPs also raised the issue of funding for agricultural aid for developing countries. To meet such commitments, the Union should first use the European Development Fund (EDF), and perhaps appropriations under heading 4, said EP delegation chair Reimer Böge (EPP-ED, DE). But the Commission proposes to use for this purpose € 1 billion in unspent funds from heading 2 (natural resources) in financial 2008-2009.
Mr Böge believes that this proposal would breach the 2006 inter-institutional agreement and financial perspective. “We are ready to negotiate quickly and appropriately all possibilities for funding new challenges, whether in development policy, measures against climate change or foreign affairs and security policy”, he said.
Citizenship and the “Lisbon lines” The €22 million margin proposed in sub-heading 3b of the PDB is too narrow to provide sufficient room for manœuvre for pilot projects and preparatory actions. The reduction in payments under heading 1b (cohesion for growth and employment) was also criticized by the EP.
Agencies
Lastly, the institutions agreed on a series of statements on various questions. Another, on agencies, was presented unilaterally by Parliament. The two institutions both welcome an initiative to evaluate regulatory agencies, but Member States did not back Parliament's proposal that the institutions form an inter-institutional working group to assess together what decisions should follow this evaluation. Furthermore, both Parliament and the Commission expressed concern about a substantial reduction in funds earmarked for creating 250 new posts as a consequence of the latest enlargement.