Brussels, 17/12/2014 (Agence Europe) - On Wednesday 17 December, the European Parliament approved by a very large majority, the EU's budget for 2015 and the refloating of the 2014 budget (EUROPE 11218). The compromise is not perfect but MEPs believe that it will allow for work to begin on gradually reducing the amount of unpaid bills.
The 2015 budget will be increased to €145.3 billion in commitments and €141.2 billion in payments. The EP welcomes the fact that the overall level of commitment appropriations constitute an increase of 1.6% compared to the 2014 budget and is above the Council's initial position advocating €1.2 billion.
Following the difficult negotiations, the EP has ratified the compromise of 9 December, which can be broken down into three constituent parts: Draft Amending Budgets No 3-8/2014 for an overall amount of €49.8 million in commitment appropriations and an additional €3.5 million from fresh money in payment appropriations, the Union Budget for the year 2015 and six joint statements, as well as three unilateral statements.
By adopting the report of Eider Gardiazabal Rubial, the EP emphasised that while allowing the Commission to meet the most urgent payment requirements in 2014, the level of additional payment appropriations for the 2014 budgets “ will not be sufficient to solve the recurrent snowball effect of unpaid bills in 2015”. Hence, the EP puts the emphasis on the joint statement on a payment plan, which accompanies the agreement package on budget 2014 and budget 2015. The EP also emphasises the joint commitment made by the three EU institutions to do everything they can to reduce the level of unpaid bills.
The EP welcomes the increase of €244.2 million in the overall level of commitment appropriations compared to the original position of the Council of 2 September 2014; is satisfied with the fact that the €521.9 million of cuts by the Council in commitments have been fully reversed and that a further €170.7 million of commitments have been added, including the full package of pilot projects and preparatory actions and €95 million for Horizon 2020, COSME, ERASMUS and humanitarian aid.
The EP welcomes the fact that, thanks to further assigned revenues identified in the common agricultural policy, a solution has been found to finance €273.6 million of emergency measures in response to the Russian food import ban “without mobilising from the outset the reserve for crises in the agricultural sector”.
During the press conference, Jean Arthuis (ALDE, France), the chairman of the EP budgets committee, explained, “we have obtained 4.8 billion euros for payment appropriations (3.5 in 2014 and 1.3 in 2015) and just 95 million in commitment appropriations “. According to the MEP, they will therefore need to implement the mechanism for clearing the unpaid bills. The amount of unpaid invoices (at the end of 2014) will soon be known. They will need to agree on what can be considered as a reasonable level of unpaid invoices to begin the clearing process, explained Arthuis. He said that he was very eager to obtain the draft amending budget for 2015, which will focus on the investment plan of €315 billion. (LC)