Brussels, 25/09/2013 (Agence Europe) - On Wednesday 25 September, the European Commission adopted the draft amending budget aiming to increase the payment appropriations of the 2013 budget by €3.9 billion, so as to reach the overall level proposed in March 2013 (a total of €11.2 billion). The Council and European Parliament adopted the first tranche (€7.3 billion) in September 2013 after deciding, during the negotiations on the 2014-2020 multiannual financial framework (MFF), to divide the initial draft amending budget into two.
The European Parliament subjected approval of the 2014-2020 MFF (planned for the end of November) to obtaining the absolute guarantee that the outstanding payments claims for 2013 will be fully covered.
This second tranche is based on updated estimates for payments in cohesion policy provided by member states themselves. The estimates show that the 2013 budget, as adopted by the Council and the European Parliament, will not allow the EU to reimburse beneficiaries of the EU funded programmes (mainly for completed projects under the cohesion policy).
“Time and again in the past few years I have warned that the voted EU budgets are well below the legitimate claims of EU beneficiaries”, said European Commissioner for Financial Programming and Budget Janusz Lewandowski. “We see the result today as estimates of upcoming claims, validated by member states themselves, clearly show that we need additional funds to meet our legal obligations towards the beneficiaries of EU funds - mainly national, regional and local authorities who await EU reimbursements of EU funded projects that they have completed at home. This amendment is particularly important, as it is a condition for the adoption of the next MFF. We owe it to the crisis-stricken Europe and hundreds of thousands of EU beneficiaries to finally adopt and implement the MFF as the EU budget constitutes an essential source of investment in EU countries. I trust that both the member states and the European Parliament will swiftly adopt this amendment to the EU budget”, said Lewandowski.
The bulk of the €3.9 billion will be spent to pay bills sent in by the member states in the cohesion policy area (in other words, €3.1 billion). Some €344 million will be used to reinforce instruments stimulating growth and jobs - in particular, research, SME financing and student mobility. Also, €121 million is proposed to help the victims of major humanitarian crises especially in Syria, Mali and the Horn of Africa. The draft amending budget has to be approved by the budgetary authority - in other words, by the Council (EU member states) and the European Parliament.
The proposal states that the draft amending budget no 8 for 2013 aims to plug the needs not yet covered for the end of the financial year, so as to honour the legal obligations resulting from past and present commitments, so as to avoid financial penalties, and so as to allow the beneficiaries to receive the funds planned by the EU policies for which the Parliament and Council had authorised the corresponding commitment appropriations from previous annual budgets. The additional payment appropriations that are requested will allow the RAL (commitments outstanding) to be reduced, as well as the risk of carrying abnormally high levels of unpaid bills forward to the 2014 financial year, the Commission adds. (LC/transl.fl)