Brussels, 25/04/2016 (Agence Europe) - Over their working lunch in the framework of their informal meeting in Amsterdam on Friday 21 April, the EU finance ministers held a debate on what needs to be done to make the current multi-annual financial framework (MFF) able to react to unforeseen circumstances, such as the migrant crisis. However, according to most of the member states, there is no question of adjusting the upper limits under the current MFF.
We need to see “how the MFF's agility could be increased”, Jeroen Dijsselbloem, the Dutch finance minister, told the press conference. “Around the table, the ministers expressed a strong political will to ensure that the budget can adapt to changes of circumstances to respond to the crisis” of migrants and refugees, the Dutch minister added.
According to Dijsselbloem, the European Commissioner for the Budget, Kristalina Georgieva, who attended the working lunch, said that she would take up the ideas put forward by the ministers in the framework of preparations for the draft EU budget for 2017 and in the framework of the work on the mid-term review of the current MFF (2014-2020).
Ceilings must not be raised
Answering a question from the press, Dijsselbloem said that most of the ministers had made it very clear that they wished to remain in the framework of the current limits of the MFF. “We can't halfway change those or raise the ceilings. All we can do is look for flexibility between different chapters and we can look at special instruments: are they designed well? There are different possibilities within the framework to increase the flexibility”, he said.
The Commission stressed that the current MFF was considerably more flexible than previously. Valdis Dombrovskis, Commissioner for the Euro, confirmed that most of the member states did not want review the MFF ceilings. The idea, the Commissioner said, is to look at ways of redistributing the money between the headings of the EU budget more flexibly; using unspent money from the 2007-2013 period for the requirements of the refugee crisis, and extending the scope of application of certain current instruments. “It is possible to find additional funds to manage the refugee crisis in the framework of the current ceilings of the MFF”, the Commissioner summed up.
On 28 May, the European Commission is to present the draft 2017 budget and,towards the end of the year, will present a communication on the mid-term review of the 2014-2020 MFF.
As regards the predictability of the budget, “we didn't spend too much time on this”, Dijsselbloem said. He simply noted progress made in this matter, adding that the Commission had undertaken to limit the number of amending budgets on the annual budgets. The idea seems to be to bring them together in a single amending budget, to create a “more homogenous procedure”. Furthermore, as regards the statistics of the statistical office of the EU, Eurostat is trying to improve the efficiency of the procedure. (Original version in French by Lionel Changeur)