Brussels, 06/12/2001 (Agence Europe) - On Monday evening the European Parliament's Budget Committee endorsed the draft reports by Carlos Costa Neves (EPP-ED, Portugal) and Kathalijne Maria Buitenweg (Greens/EFA, NL) on the EU's general budget for 2002, which should be smoothly adopted by the European Parliament in Strasbourg on Thursday since most areas of conflict (Afghanistan, restructuring fisheries and aid for border regions) were settled with the Council at the 22 November consultation meeting. Adopting the amendments to the Costa Neves' report, however, took MEPs some time since long discussion was necessary on ensuring funding for external policies to match the EU's commitments to various sensitive regions and the MEPs disagreed quite profoundly on the response to the European Commission's request for new posts.
Foreign policy. The Director of DG Budget, Jean-Paul Mingasson noted, "perplexed", that the proposal on cooperation with Latin America amounted to favouring EU action there over and above action in Afghanistan. He added that the 2002 budget for the Meda programme (hiding the issue of aid for the Palestinians) was not just lower than in 2001 but also lower than in the Preliminary Draft Budget (PDB) for 2002. After a long discussion Mr Costa Neves suggested going back to the PDB levels for the Meda programme (EUR 715 million).
New posts at the Commission. By a slim margin (20 to 19), the Budget Committee agreed with the rapporteur's proposal to include the credits needed for a third of the new posts requested by the Commission in the reserve, ie 105 of the 317 posts (the Council agreed to endorse the creation of 68 new posts for external delegations). The Budget Committee Chair, Terry Wynn, felt that this was unlikely to win over majority MEP support in the plenary. EUROPE understands that the amendment will be amended before the plenary vote to request that 25% (around 70 posts) are frozen. Mr Costa Neves justified this on the grounds that the Commission had not provided the EP with sufficient assurances on 1) the total number of unfilled posts (felt to be too high) which stood at 601 on 29 October, or 3.8% of the total nubmer of temporary and permanent posts; 2) "exactly" how it was going to fund the 3.7% 2002 pay rise; 3) coordination between budgetary and legislative procedures; and 4) the early retirement scheme and how to let 600 officials go. Commissioner Michaele Schreyer did not manage to change the rapporteur's mind on Monday, although some MEPs called for a compromise "symbolic" blocking of 10% of the posts. Ms Schreyer noted that the number of unfilled positions had fallen in November on the October figure and now made up 3.5% of the total (excluding unfilled positions in the Translation Service deliberately left empty in order to recruit new interpreters when the EU accepts new Member States), which is the target set in the EP resolution. She explained that she had to find EUR 20 million (7.7 million of which has already been found) to fund the 3.7% pay rise for officials for 2002, but had no intention of leaving posts unfilled in order to make the necessary savings.