Brussels, 19/10/2011 (Agence Europe) - The Polish Presidency of the Council of Ministers of the EU, the European Parliament and the European Commission are holding a major conference in Brussels on Thursday 20 and Friday 21 October on how to fund European policies, both those which fall within the EU's area of responsibility (common agricultural policy, cohesion policy, research, transport, etc) and those related to the European 2020 strategy.
“I launched the idea a year ago of bringing together an assembly made up, just like the European Convention in 2003 (which produced the draft European constitution), of representatives of the European institutions, the 27 ministers of government representatives and, above all, representatives of all national parliaments in sufficient number that each can send one or more representatives of the governing majority and the opposition”, MEP Alain Lamassoure (EPP, France) told Agence Europe. The idea, he said, is to hold a debate involving, for the first time, all the major political forces in the EU on how the Union finances European policies. This includes: (1) policies for which the EU has responsibility and which are contained within the European budget and multiannual financial framework (farm policy, cohesion policy, the research framework policy, transport); (2) flagship policies of the EUROPE 2020 strategy, which are priorities agreed by all heads of government at the European Council of July 2010 (a 10-year action programme, following on from the Lisbon Strategy, so that Europe, once out of the crisis, recovers its level of growth and its competitiveness). “This 10-year project is an idea from the Council, not the Parliament or the Commission. Yet, 15 months later, still not a single euro has been put up for priority action”, Lamassoure noted.
He believes that national political debates and preparation of national budgets have to be de-compartmentalised and that coordination of budgetary policies should not be restricted simply to the sole objective of reducing deficits and balancing the books. A further dimension has to be introduced: “Let's see how each country, in finding budgetary cuts, manages to continue to fund policies for the future, including those that relate to the EUROPE 2020 strategy”, Lamassoure said. He hopes to bring a reaction from national parliaments to the ideas “that we are proposing” on: - separating the funding of the European budget from national budgets; - giving the EU its own resources (through VAT, financial transaction tax, etc) which would relieve national budgets of the need to finance European policies. How to share the task of funding the EU 2020 strategy flagship initiatives between national and European budgets must also be discussed.
This is a first response “to the lack of public debate on the new European economic governance which, for the moment, is being negotiated among the initiated in the Eurogroup, the Ecofin Council and the European Council, and, to some little extent, in the European Parliament. National parliaments are totally outside the process”, Lamassoure went on.
He acknowledged that, with regard to negotiations on the 2014-2020 financial framework, “we are completely in the dark over what is to happen in the coming months. Negotiation on the 2014-2020 financial perspectives will be able to begin in earnest once we get out of the dark. For the moment, all leaders are preoccupied with putting out the fire”. He believes that cohesion policy expenditure is even safer than common agricultural policy (CAP) spending. “It's absolutely hands off cohesion policy and hands of the CAP. And the remainder, only 20% of the EU budget, is negotiable. That is the current situation and I'm very unhappy with it. Spending for the future involves agriculture and cohesion policy a little, but it is largely in research and innovation.” There is an EU spatial responsibility, but “not a single euro has been allocated to it. Yet space is essential for our industrial future, research and also to give Europe a military dimension at some point in the future. France, for example, has all the technology necessary to construct a missile shield that is purely European in design”, Lamassoure noted.
Polish Secretary of State for European Affairs Mikolaj Dowgielewicz told press in Warsaw on 18 October that he hoped this conference “will help end some myths about the European budget. We are not afraid of difficult issues. On the contrary, we have to broach all political dilemmas”. “We are bringing in a new element. This will be a debate that focuses more on Europeans, not just on each country's interests”, he added.
The meeting on Thursday 20 October will be opened by European Parliament President Jerzy Buzek, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk and European Commission President José Manuel Durão Barroso. Three groups will discuss the main issues of the financial framework from 2014 to 2020: the future of own resources, spending priorities, and the added value of the European budget. The conclusions of the two days of discussions will be uploaded to the internet at midday on Friday. (LC/transl.rt)