Brussels, 08/10/2010 (Agence Europe) - The European Parliament's budgets committee is increasing pressure on EU member states to get them to agree on a 2011 budget that matches the scale of the EU's ambitions and challenges. Finalising its position in the evening of Thursday 7 October on the draft budget, to be voted upon in plenary in Strasbourg on 20 October, the EP budgets committee urged the Council of Ministers to not only develop new funding sources for the EU's budget, but also to urgently revise the current multi-annual financial plans (2007-2013) to ensure there is finance for the EU's new work and priorities.
Adopting reports by Sidonia Jêdrzejewska (EPP, Poland) and Helga Trüpel (Greens/EFA, Germany) which make changes to the 2011 draft budget, the budgets committee asked for the upper limits to the budget headings set in 2006 to be adjusted to meet today's situation. The MEPs point out that the EU budget should never be seen or assessed like a financial charge adding an extra burden to national budgets, but instead should be seen as a potential way of preparing measures and investment decided at national level and also to create European value-added.
As expected, the budgets committee restored the funding levels reduced by the Council of Ministers and set a 2011 budget of a total close to what the European Commission initially suggested: €130.14 billion in payment appropriations and €142.65 billion in commitment appropriations.
Revising the financial framework - The budgets committee says that the margins remaining in the current multiannual financial framework (MFF) (2007-2013) do not provide enough room for manœuvre. The MFF does not take account of extra expenditure due to the financial crisis or new policy areas and new tasks under the Lisbon Treaty (energy, research, financial surveillance, climate change and foreign policy). The MEPs therefore call for a significant increase in the budget and say that an immediate review of the current MFF upper limits is inevitable in the light of the range of challenges and new priorities that have arisen.
New income sources - The budgets committee wants to get the Council and Commission around the negotiating table to decide on new funding sources for the EU. The EP is known to favour the idea of introducing an EU tax. Several options will be unveiled by the Commission on 19 October in a document on the review of the EU's budget (direct tax paid by taxpayers, tax on financial transactions, tax on air travel, tax on profits generated by the EU's carbon trading system and others). The budgets committee has added two new budget lines to the 2011 budget. The first invites the Council to enter discussions on new funding sources for the EU budget, adding that this is an integral part of the overall 2011 budget deal. The second budget line asks the Council and Commission to introduce mechanisms to make it easier to bring forward unused monies from a previous year, particularly in the view of the financial regulation. To date, unused funding is divided up and sent back to the member states at the end of the year. The idea is that the surplus funding should be allocated to EU projects.
“Lisbonising the budget” - Most of the budgets committee, particularly the members of the S&D, ALDE, Greens/EFA and GUE/NGL, call for the addition of four new budget lines on the “mid-term review of needs” in the domains of competiveness, natural resources, freedom, security and justice, and foreign action. The MEPs point out that the EU has new responsibilities under the Lisbon Treaty and calls for a suitable level of funding and suitable involvement for the European Parliament in the talks on the new multiannual financial framework.
The budgets committee also sets out criteria for activating the financial stability mechanism set up in the wake of the Greek debt crisis. (L.C./transl.fl)