Brussels, 20/07/2001 (Agence Europe) - On first reading of Budget 2002, on Friday, the Budget Council unanimously established a draft budget amounting to 99.009 billion euro in commitment appropriations (increase of 2.1% on Budget 2001) and 95.598 billion euro in payment appropriations (+ 1.97% on 2001). This is confirmation of the agreement secured within Coreper, with the only difference being that all Member States agreed to the draft budget (see EUROPE of 18 July, p.8 ad 13 July, p.8). The total amount of own-resources necessary to finance expenditure corresponds to 1.05% of Community GNP. The meeting between the Council and Parliament certainly highlighted some differences (notably what to do with appropriations earmarked for the fisheries agreement with Morocco and for Cfsp), but, thanks to the adoption of declarations, the two branches of the budgetary authority gradually rallied around, allowing them to secure certain progress concerning Heading 5 of the financial perspectives and on how to tackle agricultural spending in its time of crisis (BSE, foot-and-mouth).
The budgetary authority calls on the Secretaries General of all institutions to prepare a report, before the trilogy of 15 October, comprising an "multi-annual analysis of administrative expenditure". This report will allow them to identify economies of scale resulting from increased inter-institutional cooperation (pooling human resources and identification of best practice, notably in real estate policy). Parliament distances itself from the Council in that it wants the field of study to be enlarged to decentralised agencies, to Eurojust, to SIS II and to the office for the protection of personal data. The Commission protested against the Council's desire to only accept 78 of the 317 jobs it was requesting, while awaiting the results of the deliberations of the Coreper over the freeing of 600 civil servants. Concerning the credits foreseen for the fishing agreement with Morocco, the Council prefers to wait. Thus it proposes to review the situation in the light of the presentation, in October, of the amending letter, which includes estimates over the needs stemming from new fishing agreement (notably those concluded with Mauritania and Senegal). Thus it accepts the size of the credits written into the reserve and insists for them not to be used for other ends that the fishing agreements with third countries. The Parliament feels for its part, that due to the failure of the negotiations with Morocco, these credits become non-obligatory spending and that it would have the legal force to allocate them to other external actions. Commissioner Michaele Schreyer, linked this issue with proposal presented on Wednesday for the restructuring plan for the Spanish and Portuguese fleets, notably because the procedure to be followed (use of flexibility instrument) will be determined in the amending letter and because it is necessary to ensure budgetary neutrality in this specific action.
The Parliament and the Council reached an agreement on the fact of not retaining the EUR 1 billion reserve foreseen by the Commission for emergency agricultural spending. They adopted a joint declaration in which they note that there exists, notably due to the ending of this reserve, a significant margin of EUR 1.56 billion under the ceiling of the financial prospects for Section 1A (market agricultural spending). The Commission is invited to assess the new needs (mainly those arising from foot-and-mouth expenditure) which should be financed through credits unused in 2001 (which amount to over one billion under Heading 1A) and according to the traditional procedure for the October correcting letter. Finally, regarding ESDP, as no agreement was found, it is the preliminary draft budget (EUR 35 million) which was approved by the Council in conformity with the procedure set out in the inter-institutional agreement of 1999. According to the draft budget 2002 established by the Council: - agricultural spending amounts to EUR 45.021 billion in commitment and payment appropriations (up 2.3% compared to 2001); - commitment appropriations for structural actions are EUR 33.638 billion and EUR 32.075 billion in payments (that is, +2.8% and +1.6% compared to 2001).