Brussels, 13/12/2011 (Agence Europe) - On Tuesday 13 December 2011, the EU Council of Ministers confirmed an agreement on how to pay the 2012 and 2013 budget overshoot for the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER). The Luxembourg, Dutch and Swedish delegations abstained from the vote.
The agreement will find €1.2 billion in commitment appropriations for ITER for 2012 and 2013, addition to the €100 million already earmarked in the EU's budget for 2012.
A Council of Ministers' press release comments that the deal enables the EU to meet its international commitments to the financing of ITER along with China, India, Japan, South Korea, Russia and the United States. The ITER reactor is being built at Cadarache in France.
The €1.2bn in commitment appropriations will come from the following sources: (1) €840 million from a revision of the Multiannual Financial Framework to raise the upper limits of the commitment appropriations for sub-headings 1a (Competitiveness for Growth and Employment) by €650 million in 2012 and €190 million in 2013. This rise will be compensated by a reduction in the upper commitment appropriations limit for Heading 2 (Natural Resource Conservation and Management) by €450 million in 2011 and for Heading 5 (Administration) by €243 million in 2011 and €147 million in 2012; and (2) the budget procedure for 2013 will provide €360 million.
Further changes to the Multiannual Financial Framework have been ruled out. The upper limit for commitment appropriations for 2013 will be increased by €580 million, corresponding to a €580 million decrease in the upper limit for commitment appropriations in 2011.
In a statement, Austria, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden and the United Kingdom “regret that for the sum to be financed by redeployments the financial sources remain uncertain for another year.” These member states are of the opinion that €360 million of commitment appropriations needed for the ITER project in 2013 “should be made available through real redeployments, without using the negative reserve, the flexibility instrument or margins. With regard to the draft budget 2013 the Commission is therefore asked to determine the required appropriations for ITER without using the negative reserve, the flexibility instrument or margins.”
On the same day, the European Parliament endorsed the agreement on the extra €1.3 billion for ITER in plenary, but in an amendment it strongly regretted the “unilateral statement” of the six above-mentioned countries that gives the opposite interpretation from the EP delegation's view, as explained Alain Lamassoure (EPP, France), the chair of the EP's budgets committee. Reimer Böge (EPP, Germany) warned that if the Council of Ministers stands by the six-country statement, then the EP will not guarantee the €360 million needed for 2013 because ITER funding in 2013 must not be to the detriment of other projects. (LC/transl.fl)