Brussels, 02/04/2015 (Agence Europe) - In a debate on Thursday 1 April on the outcome of the budget trialogue talks on 30 March on the EU's budget for 2016, the chair of the European Parliament's budgets committee, Jean Arthuis (ALDE, France), said that unpaid bills stood at €24 billion at the end of 2014, despite the €4.8 billon that Parliament had obtained at the end of last year.
“We are still waiting for the plan to pay off the unpaid bills”, Arthuis told the other members of the committee. The plan will include budget projections, a repayment schedule and a timeline, and there will need to be a debate about what can be considered a reasonable level of unpaid bills, he added. The trialogue decided that a payment schedule would be unveiled to the budgets committee on 16 April. European Budget Commissioner Kristalina Georgieva will attend the meeting. The inter-institutional group will debate the plan for paying off unpaid bills before the end of May. There may also be a trialogue meeting after the inter-institutional group meeting in order to decide on the timeline for the plan to pay off the unpaid bills.
On 30 March, Commissioner Kristalina Georgieva unveiled information for a payment plan, showing unpaid bills dropping from €20 billion at the end of 2015 to €2 billion in 2016 (see EUROPE 11287). (Lionel Changeur)