Brussels, 29/06/2001 (Agence Europe) - During an exchange of views at the Parliamentary budget committee last Monday, the rapporteur on the proposal for reformulating the financial regulation, Gianfranco Dell'Alba (Bonino list, Italian), suggested the following guidelines to continue the scrutiny of this dossier with the Council and the Commission: - the Commission would have to put forward a written position on each of the amendments adopted on May 31; - the Council must undertake to fully respect the declaration of 1975 on the conciliation procedure and agree on a deadline to complete its scrutiny of the proposal. If these requests are welcomed, the EP could « proceed to a final vote on its resolution during the September pleniary», thought Mr Dell'Alba. We should point out that the Parliament had decided on May 31 to adopt all the amendments whilst adjourning the vote for a resolution in order to register not only its critical position with regard to the Commission's proposal but also its displeasure toward the Council which refused to fully undertake discussions with it (see EUROPE June 2, p.15). The budget committee will pursue its deliberations on July 10 and 11, in the hope that it can address this subject during the budgetary trilogue on July 20 before the first reading of the Council on preliminary draft budget for 2002.
« The new financial regulation is a key step in the reform process, that's why we must maintain a good pace of scrutiny », said Commissioner Michaele Schreyer during this meeting. She pointed out that she would accept raising the procedure problem during the trilogue. The Commission said that it would not be able to submit a modified proposal in September but only a « working document » taking account of the « virtual » amendments by the EP and the opinion of the Court of Auditors.
Nuanced position of the Council on the procedure and the text
The Council, for its part, is hiding behind the strict application of the provisions of the Treaty - which envisages the consultation procedure - and holds to the conclusions of the Ecofin Council on June 5 in which it asked the Commission to put forward, « as soon as possible during the third quarter of 2001», a modified text accompanied by a proposal on the modalities of execution. The Commission's idea to submit a working document instead of a modified proposal is interpreted as a concession granted to the EP. In its conclusions, the Council considers the proposal on the financial regulation as being a « useful base », but asks for enough time to examine it, and thinks that the relations between the financial regulation and the sectoral regulations « must be clearly defined and specified in the text of the financial regulation ». Both the Court of Auditors and the Council wonder about the possibility of taking up provisions of the treaty as regards the external auditor, whilst the Council accepts it can take up in the regulation some provisions on the legal bases of the interinstitutional agreeement of May 6, 1999, but is against the inscription of provisions on the joint declaration of March 4, 1975.
The Finance Ministers have also clarified points on the different subjects of the proposal:
Budgetary principles: the Council wishes to include the notion of « budgetary truth (precision) » amongst the other budgetary principles, which could translate into a ban on writing into the budget funding over estimated needs. It recalls its wish to specify explicitly that funding can be written into the « reserve for provisional funding » only in two cases: absence of a legal base or uncertainty as to how much funding is left. It underlines the importance of specifying, in the text of the regulation, that recourse to the « negative reserve » requires the primary agreement of the two branches of the budgetary authority. In addition it considers that recourse to borrowing so as to finance property investment for the institutions is not in accordance with the treaty and the decision on own resources.
Role of the financial players: the Council underlines that, without prejudice to the Commission's principle of collegiality, final responsibility must fall on the competent Commissioner. It also considers that simply referring to the current status of administrators and to the regime applicable to the other agents of the Communities is insufficient and that complementary provisions should be established.
Subsidies: according to the Council, a precise definition of the organisations which could benefit from subsidies must appear in the text of the regulation, and the only waiver to the provisions concerning co-financing should be humanitarian aid. The Council wants the new financial regulation to allow full co-operation with international organisations, in particular the UN and international financial institutions. The financial regulation must not prevent the Commission from contributing to joint financing or that grouped with other donors, says the Council, which does however support the introduction of a specific clause on leaving office for contractualisation of external actions.