Brussels, 11/03/2015 (Agence Europe) - Fostering growth by supporting job creation, companies and entrepreneurship, showing solidarity both inside and outside the EU, and tackling the payments backlog and reforming the EU's own resources system. These are the priorities set out by the European Parliament on Wednesday 11 March prior to negotiations on the 2016 budget.
With its adoption (by 484 votes to 188, with 36 abstentions) without amendment of the report by José Manuel Fernandes (EPP, Portugal) on the guidelines for the EU budget for 2016, Parliament noted that the EU budget is expected to provide the backbone of Jean-Claude Juncker's investment plan “by making available the guarantee fund of €8 billion required in commitments and payments for the provisioning of the European Fund for Strategic Investments (EFSI)”. Parliament felt that the EU budget contribution should deliver a significant return through a higher leverage effect. It confirmed its willingness to examine with the utmost vigilance how financial commitments by the EU to the EIB for the setting-up of the EFSI are entered in the EU budget.
The European Commission was asked to explore the reasons for the slow start of the European youth initiative in the member states and to secure its funding beyond 2015.
Parliament stressed that common efforts to manage migration flows lie at the crossroads of both internal and external solidarity. It repeated its support for reinforcement of the EU's means and for the development of a culture of fair burden-sharing among member states when it comes to asylum and migration matters. It called on the Commission to propose targeted reinforcements of the relevant programmes and instruments, thus demonstrating the EU's pledge to tackle these issues.
Unpaid bills. Parliament highlighted the commitment that at least three inter-institutional meetings devoted to payments would be held in the course of this year. At the end of 2014, unpaid bills amounted to €24.7 billion for cohesion programmes alone over the period from 2007 to 2013. Parliament called for a definite payment schedule for returning the level of unpaid bills to the normal. MEPs repeated their call for an in-depth reform of the revenue system for funding the EU budget (revenue section of the EU budget). The Commission will bring forward its draft budget for 2016 in May. (Lionel Changeur)