Brussels, 04/11/2014 (Agence Europe) - MEPs at the European Parliament's budgets committee gave their support during an indicative vote on Tuesday 4 November to the different budget proposals put forward by the European Commission for the 2014 budget.
Committee members confirmed the EP's determination to treat all draft amending budget 2014 proposals as a single block. This subject is at the heart of the 2015 budget adoption procedure. The budget committee is also demanding that the problem of the amending budgets is resolved before beginning negotiations on the 2015 budget. The first consultation meeting will take place on Thursday 6 November.
“We have to have a full clarity on payments available in the 2014 budget before sitting down to discuss the budget for 2015. This latter will not hold the road if we do not know how much unpaid bills we have at the end of 2014”, said rapporteur for the Draft Amending Budgets (DABs), Gérard Deprez (ALDE, Belgium). At the end of 2013, €23.4 billion in unpaid invoices were postponed until 2014.
The budgets committee is therefore supporting the texts proposed by the Commission; - Draft amending budget (DAB) no 2 for 2014 which seeks to incorporate the budget surplus of 2013 of €1 billion into the 2014 budget. The EP and Council have already approved their positions, which are different. The European Parliament adopted an amendment during the plenary, asking to put last year's budget surplus into a new reserve aimed at covering additional payment needs in 2014. The Council informed the European Parliament that it cannot approve this amendment; - In Draft amending budget no 3 for 2014, the Commission aims to increase the payments in the 2014 EU budget by €4.7 billion in order to cover outstanding bills; - - Draft amending budget no 4 for 2014 as amended by a letter of amendment seeks, in particular, to incorporate additional revenue amounting to €2.4 billion mainly from fines; - Draft amending budget no 5 for 2014 aims to mobilise €47 million in commitments and payments out of the EU solidarity fund in order to remediate damages caused by floods in Italy (€16.3 million), an earthquake in Greece (€3.7 million), as well as ice storms in Slovenia (€18.4 million) and Croatia (€8.6 million); Draft amending budget no 6 for 2014 seeks to enter into the EU budget an amount of €9.5 billion resulting from a revised forecast of the EU revenue and to diminish the national GNI contributions accordingly. It also incorporates an increase of traditional own resources, decreasing member states' contributions to the EU budget by €420 million in total; - Draft amending budget no 7 for 2014 is designed to mobilise €79.7 million in commitments and payments out of the EU solidarity fund to remediate damages caused by floods in Serbia (€60.2 million), Bulgaria (€10.5 million) and Croatia (€9 million).
MEPs considered it crucial that windfall from fines (DAB3 and DAB4) as well as surplus from last year (DAB2) was not returned to member states but were used instead to pay outstanding bills, most of which date from the previous MFF period. (LC)