Brussels, 12/11/2014 (Agence Europe) - As requested by EU finance ministers (see EUROPE 11193), the European Commission adopted a proposal on Wednesday 12 November seeking to authorise the United Kingdom to pay the additional contribution of €2.1 billion it owes the 2014 EU budget in several instalments.
The proposal amends the rules on the adjustment of EU budget contributions from member states. This comes after the current automatic system had this year led to a demand for exceptionally large additional payments from some countries (a total of €9.5 billion in 2014). The proposal provides for an extended deadline for payment until 1 September of the next year (rather than 1 December), interest free, under exceptional circumstances. The extension would kick in, if additional payment requests are over a certain threshold: - for an individual member state, if it is requested to pay more than twice its regular monthly payment to the EU budget; - for all countries, if the total requested adjustment is more than half of the total monthly contribution of all member states (around €5 billion). When requesting delayed payments, member states must provide a binding schedule for those payments. They will then be required to pay interest if they do not respect the agreed schedule.
The proposal: - permits the targeting of exceptional circumstances; - ensures equality of treatment among member states; - maintains the robustness of the system of own resources. Each country will be able to request permission to spread payments.
The proposal must now be adopted unanimously by the Council. It also requires the opinion of the Parliament (Ed: Parliament could challenge the procedure that requires only its opinion) and the EU Court of Auditors.
The adjustment of member states' national contributions based on VAT and GNI (own resources) to the financing of the EU budget takes place every year on the first working day of December. These adjustments vary year-on-year, based on updated GNI data provided by the member states, and based on rules agreed by them. The adjustment is not an additional payment into the EU budget, but is about fair burden sharing. The money flows back to member states based on the relative size of their adjusted GNI.
The Commission has set out the timetable which shows it is difficult to imagine that David Cameron was unaware of the matter before the 24 October European Council, and his outburst against the €2.1 billion bill (see EUROPE 11184): - on 15 October, the Commission received the initial data from Eurostat, on 17 October, the Commission sent initial calculations based on GNI to the member states; - on the same day, a technical-level meeting was held to review the detailed data; - draft amending budget 6/2014 was presented on 17 October; - on 22 October, a meeting took place between EU statistical offices and Eurostat to confirm the GNI data (the decision was “unanimous”, a source has pointed out).
The proposal on own resources, along with the amending budgets for 2014 and the 2015 budget will be negotiated as a package at the budget conciliation on Friday 14 November, sources have said. Coreper will seek agreement on the draft budgets for 2014 on Thursday 13 November. (LC)