The European Parliament’s budgets committee will examine a draft report by Siegfried Mureşan (EPP, Romania) on Tuesday 20 June on the EP’s negotiating mandate for the inter-institutional talks on the EU’s draft budget for 2018 (see EUROPE 11798). The next budget trialogue meeting will be on 13 July, before the Council decides on its negotiating position. The Council hopes agreement will be reached on the 2018 budget before or at the Coreper meeting of 12 July (Coreper is the committee of member states’ representatives to the EU).
According to Mureşan’s draft report, the budgets committee feels that the European Commission’s proposal for next year’s budget “corresponds to Parliament’s view that the 2018 EU budget must enable the EU to continue to generate growth and jobs while ensuring the security of its citizens”.
MEPs welcome the Commission’s decision to include the results of the mid-term review of the multiannual financial framework (MFF) for 2014-2020 in the draft budget for 2018, even though the parliamentary situation in the United Kingdom following the 8 June elections is holding up endorsement.
Budget flexibility. The rapporteur says greater flexibility is required in the EU budget to allow the EU to respond properly to emergencies and finance its priority policies. The rapporteur welcomes the increase in credits proposed for the Horizon 2020 programme, the Connecting Europe Facility and Erasmus + “but regrets that the proposed allocation for COSME (Ed: fund for SMEs) is lower in comparison with the 2017 budget”.
Parliament “welcomes the fact that the draft budget 2018 includes an additional allocation for the Youth Employment Initiative (YEI) … that integrates the provision of €500 million in commitments for YEI, as agreed upon by Parliament and the Council in the 2017 budgetary conciliation”.
For agriculture, the draft report calls on the European Commission to ensure that the €713.5 million margin under the caps in the agriculture heading of the draft budget for 2018 is big enough to cope with any new crises. (Original version in French by Lionel Changeur)