The European Parliament wishes to cancel the budget cuts in the initial position of the Council on the 2018 budget, the negotiators of the budget committee said on Thursday 14 September.
On 26 and 27 September, Parliament's committee on budgets will vote on the budgetary amendments to the position of the Council for next year. Parliament's plenary vote on the 2018 budget will take place on 25 October and the first conciliation meeting with the Council is scheduled for 6 November.
In July, the Council decided to make fairly substantial cuts to the draft budget as proposed by the European Commission (see EUROPE 11828). At this stage, the member states are providing for total expenditure of €158.9 billion in commitments and €144.4 billion in payments, or an increase of 0.6% and 7.4% respectively compared to the 2017 budget.
The rapporteur on the general budget for 2018, Siegfried Mureşan (EPP, Romania), said that he was preparing a raft of compromise amendments to get Parliament ready for negotiations with the Council. However, we will need “realistic demands and a large majority in the hemicycle”, the rapporteur added. “We will not agree to the reductions proposed by the Council”, he stressed.
Mureşan has sketched out the outlines of a possible compromise in Parliament: - under heading 1a (growth), the EU plans to cancel the cuts decided upon by the Council and to use the available margin (€56 million) to top up certain credits (research, SMEs, Erasmus, Cosme, etc.); - Parliament hopes to increase the budget for the youth initiative; - under heading 2 (management of natural resources), it will be necessary to make sure that farmers have enough money to respond to crises and to increase aid to young farmers (Parliament is planning to keep the available margin of €330 million); - under heading 3, certain lines earmarked for reinforcing the security of the citizens (such as Europol) need to be consolidated; - under heading 4, there is margin of €230 million, but all of this could be eaten up by the continuation of the refugee facility in Turkey. Parliament plans to reinforce credits for the 'Southern neighbourhood', not forgetting the countries of the eastern neighbourhood. The rapporteur also suggests reducing certain pre-accession funds in favour of Turkey, given the situation in the country, and freezing certain credits. These would be freed up in the event that Turkey makes progress towards respecting human rights.
Daniele Viotti (S&D, Italy) called for more ambition in favour of youth employment. José Manuel Fernandes (EPP, Portugal) expressed objections to the “lamentable” reductions of the Council, describing the institution as clipping its own wings by reducing some of the structural funds. (Original version in French by Lionel Changeur)