On 30 September, the European Commission adopted a draft amending budget (number 4) 2016 to secure the financing of measures related to the migrant crisis and reinforcing internal security.
This draft amending budget will update the level of credits under heading 3, 'security and citizenship', of the 2016 budget, to take account of recent developments in migration and security. The following are provided for: - an increase of €50 million in commitment appropriations and an increase of €10 million in payment appropriations for the emergency support instrument within the EU (to help manage flows of migrants); - an increase of €130 million in commitment appropriations for the AMIF (asylum, migration and integration) fund; - an increase of €70 million in commitment appropriations for the Internal Security Fund.
Given the fact that there is no more margin under heading 3, these extra amounts (in commitment appropriations) will be mobilised from the 'contingency margin', to the tune of €240.1 million. The Commission has put this amount together by redeploying €9.9 million from the European Medicines Agency in London, as a result of exchange rate differences (EUR/GBP). The Commission is proposing to offset these funds from the 'contingency margin' by using unallocated margin from heading 5 (administrative expenditure).
The Commission is planning an increase of €73.9 million in commitment appropriations under the European Fund for Strategic Investments (EFSI) 2015-2018, to take account of the proposed extension of the fund until 2020. The proposal is to fund this by reducing the financial instruments of the 'energy' plank of the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF), "with a corresponding compensation in 2018", the Commission explains.
The draft amending budget also aims to: - reduce the level of the payment appropriations by €7.284 billion, mainly in the budget lines of the cohesion policy (structural funds); -update forecasts for the traditional own resources of the EU (revenue plank of the budget) and the budgetisation of the British rebate on the EU budget. Overall, the net impact of draft amending budget 4/2016, on the expenditure side, is an increase of €225.4 million in commitment appropriations and a reduction of €7.274 billion in payments. (Original version in French by Lionel Changeur)