The significance of the future Europe is at stake. The predictions on the result of the European Council of 22-23 November dedicated to the financial perspectives of the EU for the 2014-2020 period are unanimous - there will be no overall agreement. Other sessions will be needed to define this vast budgetary envelope because it's not only a question of figures - they can't be fixed without agreement on common policies, on the idea of the two-speed Europe, and on quite a number of other subjects. The overall significance of the future Europe is at stake.
It is true that the European Commission has stated the envelope it recommends, that the Presidency of the Council has done as much at a slightly lower level, and that most of the governments have made their opinions widely known. Yet this overall envelope for seven years must be defined at unanimity and cannot be fixed without first discussing a series of complex problems on which member states have very different starting positions - which are sometimes at loggerheads and mixed with a few threats of veto. Indications of calculations are put forward and EUROPE regularly reports on them - they are indispensable for the discussion that is about to start to be founded on elements that have been calculated. But the calculations depend on political assessments.
Two groups. As predicted, many member states are divided into two groups: (1) the “Friends of better spending” include Germany, France, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Finland, Sweden and Austria - and all of them - surprise surprise! - are net contributors, in other words they contribute more to the budget than they receive, and call for the Commission's draft to be reduced; (2) the “Friends of cohesion” include 14 countries - Spain, Poland, Hungary, Romania, Portugal, the Czech Republic, Greece, Bulgaria, Slovakia, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Slovenia and Malta - which are net beneficiaries of the budget and which consider that the European Commission's proposal represents a minimum. The difference between the two does not seem huge.
The real divergences. I would personally attribute more importance to the political and doctrinal divergences that focus, for example, on the difference between the austerity of the national budgets (which must in principle respect the balance between revenue and expenditure) and the role of investment of a large part of Community spending; on the fate of the British rebate which in the view of several governments must disappear, but which for London is untouchable; on the spending freeze demanded by London as a general principle; on the divergences on the German position that aims to put a ceiling on European spending at 1% of the EU's GNI; on Denmark's proposal to reduce its participation in European spending; and on the relationship between the normal EU budget and a separate budget for the eurozone (with the consequent complications regarding the European Parliament's control on the second budget).
Complications: As for monitoring the way that member states use European funding, the suspension of payments is planned for cases where funding is used wrongly. The Commission is in the middle of applying this arrangement to Romania and EUROPE has reported on this - but the case of Greece proves how much deviations to this are in fact tolerated. As we are well aware, Germany is proposing that the draft budget of a member state be rendered invalid by a European super-commissioner if it is not in conformity with the disciplines - this is a separate aspect but it should not be ignored in the debate on the financial perspectives. And let's not forget the Commission's proposal of long ago aiming to develop the EU's own resources, which cuts the quarrels between the “net contributors” and the “net beneficiaries” at the root - but this project has not been picked up on too much, and won't be in the near future either. The Tobin tax could make the situation evolve, but some countries have decided not to participate in it and this makes the situation more complicated rather than simplifying it. At the same time, it shouldn't be ignored that the infrastructure projects that the EU finances in one member state are positive for all the other member states too, including the businesses that take part in accomplishing them.
We are not starting from scratch. The impression shouldn't be given, however, that we are starting from scratch. In fact some large scale sectoral negotiations are under way, and in some cases have been for a long time, on different aspects such as the cohesion policy, and in a particularly in-depth way in two sectors where the budget contribution is crucial - the common agricultural policy (CAP) and the common fisheries policy (CFP). These two last files deserve more specific consideration. This column will come back to them.
(FR/transl.fl)