Brussels, 27/02/2001 (Agence Europe) - The EP Budget Committee invited the plenary to accept, on Thursday, the allocation of an additional EUR 971 million for the BSE crisis in the 2001 budget. The EU 15 already gave their assent, during the Ecofin Council on 12 February, to this draft supplementary and amending budget proposed by the Commission. The budget of 971 million must finance: - 700 million for the buying of bovines to be destroyed; - 238 million for the intervention purchasing system; - 33 million for the co-financing of additional screening test.
A draft amendment, heavily debated by the Budgets Committee, should once more be discussed in plenary. The Budgets Committee rejected (14 for, 14 against) an amendment from Jan Mulder (Dutch Liberal). This amendment proposed to reduce by 50% (instead of 70%) the share of purchase-destruction of bovines financed by the Community budget, and this in order to maintain a sufficient margin for manoeuvre to finance, at the latest within the year, new measures in relation to BSE.
On the other hand, the Haug report does not finally call on the Parliament to oppose the EUR 245 million reduction in certain market spending, put forward by the Commission on the basis of the developments in the Euro/Dollar exchange rate between the drafting of the 2001 budget and that of the supplementary and amending budget. The Budgets Committee initially hesitated in taking into account this saving, qualified as "virtual" by the Commissioner for the Budget herself, because the Euro/Dollar exchange rate is now following an opposite trend. However, as the Council accepted this reduction and that it has the last word over agricultural spending, the Budgets Committee prefers not to insist on other measures on the point of principal, explain parliamentary sources.