Brussels, 01/04/2015 (Agence Europe) - The Latvian Presidency and representatives of the Commission and the European Parliament met on Monday 30 March for the first budget trialogue of the year.
Budget Commissioner Kristalina Georgieva presented a document, Elements for a payment plan, setting out action to be taken to reduce the scale of unpaid bills.
In summary, the document indicates that the problem of the payments backlog is basically solving itself. The level of unpaid bills was €24.7 billion at the end of 2014 and is expected to fall to €20 billion by end of 2015 and to €2 billion by the end of 2016. The level of payment claims for the period 2007-2013 is expected to decrease over the next two years while the implementation of the new programmes for the period 2014-2020 has not yet reached cruising speed.
The Council and Parliament representatives set out their guidelines for the 2016 budget. Gérard Deprez (ALDE, Belgium), the Parliament rapporteur on the budget, complained about a Commission table showing that, of the institutions, only the Parliament had increased its expenditure over the last two years (+0.9%) when the drive had been for the institutions to reduce their staff by 5% between 2013 and 2017 (that is 1% per year).
At a meeting of the Parliament's budgets committee on Wednesday 1 April, Deprez said that, according to the proposals of the Secretariat General, 2016 will see a reduction of 59 posts, “precisely the 1% we have to find”. However, security will have to be improved and for this 25 additional staff will have to be employed. Deprez also argued for the staffing of the secretariats of the parliamentary committees to be increased - particularly to improve monitoring of delegated and implementing acts and correct implementation of the budget by the committee services (an increase of 20 posts, according to the Secretariat General). The Secretary General will make internal redeployments for these new posts. The Parliament will then decide.
Timetable for setting the 2016 budget. The representatives of the three institutions agreed on the “pragmatic” calendar for the 2016 budget talks. The Commission wants to publish its draft budget at the end of May. The next trialogue will take place on 14 July. The Council will transmit its position by September. The Parliament budgets committee will vote on its amendments in October, before another trialogue on 19 October. In the last week of October the Parliament plenary will vote. The conciliation period will run from 29 October to 18 November, with two meetings of the conciliation committee (9 and 13 November) and a trialogue on 11 November. (Lionel Changeur)