Reason for budgetary moderation. The efforts that the member states have agreed to make - with varying degrees of readiness - in order to reduce their national budgetary deficits, also impose rigour on Community spending. This principle seems to be reasonably well shared by all. Serious differences of opinion continue on this between the European institutions but the differences concern the coverage of deficits of the past and the reforms of common policies - the overall envelope for the seven-year budgetary period, which begins next year, is not in itself contested. The 2014-2020 financial framework takes the required moderation into account.
This context should be born in mind, in my view, when assessing the attempt to relaunch the Euro-Mediterranean Assembly, the parliamentary tool of the Union for the Mediterranean (UfM), the first and least active of the instruments created over the years to manage and deepen the links between the EU and the other countries of this sea. The initiative was a generous one, but it was ineffective (see this column in EUROPE yesterday). Insisting on the relaunch of this Assembly would mean wasting resources that the European Parliament could dedicate to less spectacular - but more useful - initiatives. Even now, maintaining the prestigious headquarters of the UfM in Barcelona - the headquarters of a presidential group whose political usefulness is questionable and of a bureaucracy that produces a fair number of little read documents - raises considerable puzzlement.
Theoretical energy cooperation. It is true that the Parliamentary Assembly of the UfM was preceded by a day of discussions on energy collaboration, with the participation - alongside the parliamentarians - of public and private experts and operators (see EUROPE 10826). Yet this discussion brought nothing new - it just reiterated that energy collaboration exists between the EU and a few countries of the southern shore of the Mediterranean, and confirmed that a conference next December will bring energy ministers together from the relevant countries. It is a gamble on the future, said Mr Pierre Vimont, the secretary general of the European External Action Service - a gamble which will involve a number of countries but not the UfM itself. And we know that relations in this area of energy collaboration between the EU and the countries of the southern shore of the Mediterranean are pretty conflictual.
An official example. On a general level, this column has often criticised the waste of European budgetary resources in one member state or another - but waste for which the Community institutions themselves are responsible is just as open to criticism. I'm not talking about journalists' investigations or disagreements stemming from political differences, but about statements from the European bodies that are responsible for control.
Let me give just one example. The Court of Auditors of the EU has ripped apart the CAP subsidies to companies that process and market food products (see EUROPE 10824). The Court noted that no added value results from these subsidies for agricultural activity and for rural development - the dual objective of the CAP. It is a question of generic aid to companies - and not to farmers - companies which can use the funding to gain market share, without impacting on the value of the products, and with the risk of distorting competition and of wasting public funds. The subsidies in question are large - the Court of Auditors estimates them at €5.6 billion.
This example has nothing to do with the polemics - which are extremely heated in the European Parliament and in the Council - on CAP reform and the way CAP funding is distributed. It is quite simply, according to the Court of Auditors' report, a waste of the EU's budgetary resources.
In favour of generalised monitoring. Of course, the example I have mentioned is of limited significance - both for the rather modest magnitude of the waste that is criticised and from the political point of view. Within the European Parliament itself we sometimes hear criticisms on a completely different scale. Let me recall that last month Jean-Pierre Audy (EPP Group) suggested entrusting the European Court of Auditors and the 27 national courts of auditors with the task of together compiling a report on rationalising some Community spending and on the national use of European subsidies. Audy had mentioned wide scale waste, brought about by the inefficient use of resources - lack of coordination; research programmes on the same subject financed 10-15 times with each country acting on its own account; hundreds of separate dispersed diplomatic missions all over the world and so on.
It is true that efforts at rationalising spending are under way, but the waste continues and any action in favour of reducing it is welcome.
(FR/transl.fl)