Brussels, 11/12/2001 (Agence Europe) - The debate on the budget in Strasbourg on Tuesday appeared to show that the European Parliament will not have much of a problem endorsing next year's budget. MEPs generally welcomed the agreement reached with Council in conciliation in November, although some of them stressed that the pressure on some financial headings (internal and external policies and administrative expenditure) might become untenable in the next few years.
The rapporteur for the 2002 Budget, Carlos Costa Neves (EPP, Portugal) said that the end result was "balanced" and deserved the EP's approval, but commented that the budget's structure was a little rigid because of the Financial Perspectives. He also regretted the "anachronistic" division between compulsory and optional expenditure, and the lack of EP power in terms of budget revenue. Kathalijne Maria Buitenweg (Greens, NL) was a little more critical. On behalf of her group she said "our support is a little grudging" because of the way budgetary procedure has taken place. "This dance could be broken off (cuts operated by the Council and corrected by the Parliament) by leaving certain reductions decided by the Council, for example, those concerning spending by the Court of Justice, to confront it with the result of these actions and the unilateral obsession to remain largely below the ceiling of the financial perspectives". The Chair of the Committee on Budgets, Terence Wynn (PES, UK) said that the use of the flexibility instrument for three consecutive years demonstrates that financial perspectives are "cracking", while we are in the pre-accession phase at the EU which is already a brain-teaser. He added, moreover, that, if the EP were not able to reach qualified majority on the position adopted within its committee concerning the new posts requested by the Commission (placing in reserve of one third of the posts), then we would come back to the Council's position, which would result in the Commission being reformed according to the arrangements which are not those we would like.
Commissioner Michaele Schreyer hoped that the Parliament would not put this threat into application. She considers that both conditions are met for the EP to make the necessary funding available for allocation to all posts: (1) the Commission will make a proposal for amending the statute in order to crate a permanent system for the early retirement of officials; (2) it has undertaken to ensure better hinging between the Commission's work programme and budgetary procedure. She specified that the 2002 budget is EUR 4.6 billion below the amounts foreseen by the financial perspectives, "which bears witness to our budgetary discipline at European level and which tends to confirm that the European budget is increasing more slowly than the budget of Member States", she said.