On Wednesday 20 September, MEP Valérie Hayer (Renew Europe, French) presented the European Parliament’s Committee on Budgets (BUDG) with her report, for which she is co-rapporteur with José Manuel Fernandes (EPP, Portuguese), including a number of amendments to the European Commission’s proposal on an adjusted own resources package for the EU budget (see EUROPE 13205/2).
This package updates the own resources based on the Emissions Trading System (ETS) and the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM), and also proposes a new temporary statistical own resource based on corporate profits.
In their report, the co-rapporteurs approve the European Commission’s proposal, which incorporates several of the priorities and demands expressed by Parliament in its resolution on own resources (see EUROPE 13069/8).
They consider that the legislative text is in line with the objectives and logic of the roadmap for the establishment of new own resources (IIA) and call on the EU Council to proceed swiftly with the adoption of the proposal.
However, they deplore the EU Council’s “recurrent” practice of introducing lump sum “reductions” on the GNI contributions of certain Member States in order to obtain unanimous agreement. This concerns Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, Austria and Sweden for the period 2020-2027.
In their amendments, the rapporteurs recommend that these lump sum reductions should be subject to an automatic annual deflator of 2% instead of a GDP deflator in order to avoid excessively high rebates linked to high inflation.
“Here we recall Parliament’s historic position on reductions and the current configuration, which also disproportionately explodes the contributions of other States that have not asked to benefit from reductions. There’s a gross injustice here”, explained Valérie Hayer.
The vote in the Committee on Budgets is scheduled for 9 October.
To see Parliament’s report: https://aeur.eu/f/8o8 (Original version in French by Pauline Denys)