Brussels, 08/02/2016 (Agence Europe) - In a document published on its website, the EPP group at the European Parliament has argued in favour of a thorough mid-term review of the multi-annual financial framework (MFF) 2014-2020, to cover both the upper expenditure limits and the specific provisions of the regulation on the MFF. The aim is to have a viable budget to respond to the priorities and political challenges of the EU.
The EP's EPP group calls for a rapid agreement on a mid-term review of the MFF (with the Commission to present its proposals in 2016), to ensure that the EU has enough time to negotiate the acts ahead of the post-2020 MFF, which it will do in late 2017 and 2018.
Refugee crisis threatens to overwhelm budget
The EPP group argues that the current upper limits of the MFF have been exceeded de facto, for instance in the 'justice and security' heading (heading 3), due to the refugee crisis. Hence the need, according to the MEPs, to review the upper limits of the current MFF. Whilst respecting the pre-allocated national envelopes (in the fields of the cohesion policy and rural development), the EPP is calling for the structural funds also to make a contribution to meeting the challenges stemming from the migration crisis. The group also emphasises the need to improve the synergy between structural funds and financial instruments, including the European Fund for Strategic Investments (EFSI).
Avoiding a further payment arrears crisis. The EPP argues that steps need to be taken to avoid a further payment arrears crisis. It argues in favour of the creation of a 2016-2020 payment plan, precisely in order to avoid an accumulation of unpaid bills. The question of the budgetisation of the special instruments under the MFF (emergency aid fund, solidarity fund, flexibility instrument, European globalisation adjustment fund) must be resolved when revising the MFF and these must be calculated above the upper limits of the MFF. Additionally, the EPP group firmly believes that transferring the unspent surplus resulting from the annual implementation of the EU budget, including fines, to the following years, would “contribute to easing the payment problem”.
Budgetary flexibility. The EPP takes the view that all of the provisions on flexibility set in place by the MFF regulation should be evaluated, in order to “remove constraints” that might impede their full utilisation. New flexibility measures were brought into the MFF 2014-2020: payment flexibility (under certain conditions, and within overall upper limits laid down by the MFF, unspent margins and payment appropriations may be transferred from one financial year to the next. The upper limit of payment of the years during which unspent margins subsystem will be reduced accordingly to ensure that the overall upper limit remains unchanged); - contingency margin (0.03% of the gross national income of the EU). The EPP takes the view that a special procedure should be set in place to guarantee the availability of the necessary financial resources, at both European and national level, to allow the full implementation of the political decisions taken by the European Council.
The EPP has other requests on its wish list: - align the duration of the MFF with the political cycle of the European Parliament (i.e. an MFF of five years); - giving the EU veritable new own resources to finance the EU budget post-2020 to bring down the national contributions based on gross national income (GNI); - integrate the European Development Fund (EDF) within the EU budget; - create more internal budgetary flexibility between the headings and the years for the period post-2020.
Two schools
The European Commission has launched the mid-term review of the MFF 2014-2020, which will be presented this year and, according to European Commissioner Kristalina Georgieva, “will inspire our work” for the post-2020 budgetary programming. She made this announcement at a conference hosted in Amsterdam on 28 January by the Dutch Presidency of the EU.
The Commissioner stressed the vital need for “flexibility” in expenditure, which has made it possible to double the resources to tackle the refugee crisis, to “nearly €10 billion in 2015 and 2016”, but also to “take additional measures of around €1 billion in the 2015 and 2016 budgets” in order to take account of the “difficult circumstances faced by farmers due to the prolongation of the Russian ban on certain imports” and, over these two years, to free up cash in the order of €2 billion for Greece and in the framework of the cohesion policy (structural funds). Georgieva explained that in her current position, she had learned that the financial framework and the budget of the EU “could be described as a sort of balancing act between those who give preference to agriculture, those who prefer cohesion and those who want budgetary cuts”. “There are two schools of thought for the future financial framework”, she added: the first calls for a “radical change in the structure of the budget” and the second wishes to “keep the current balance and continue the process of gradual improvements”. (Original version in French by Lionel Changeur)