Brussels, 03/05/2002 (Agence Europe) - Apart from Italy, which is maintaining its strong reservation about the delegation of various budget implementation tasks to national bodies, the Committee of Member States' representatives to the EU (COREPER) managed to iron out the last problems on Thursday that various delegations had raised concerning the proposal to rehash the EU's Financial Regulation (see EUROPE of 12 April, p.8). The issue is on the agenda of Tuesday's ECOFIN Council. The Spanish Presidency said on Friday that the Council was on the point of striking an agreement since COREPER had managed to settle five of the six Member States' reservations, the last one being Italy's. Hence the Presidency is confident that the ECOFIN Council will adopt a common position on the issue and then, if the European Parliament so desires, start consulting the EP.
Italy is calling for the Commission to be able to delegate to national public bodies budget implementation tasks, apart from those connected with external action. The controversy surrounding negative agricultural spending (agriculture funds recovered during the accounts clearance process) was settled before the COREPER meeting during the Budget Committee's work. Six Member States (Italy, France, Greece, Spain, Ireland and Belgium) managed to have the negative spending kept for several years (they can be kept in the agriculture budget and be taken into account when calculating Financial Perspectives ceilings) through a Council statement pledging to reassess the issue of negative agricultural spending at the same time as the new Financial Perspectives are discussed with a view to reaching a final decision before 2006. Luxembourg and Germany have lifted their reservations about the opinion procedure of both arms of the Budgetary Authority for the EU institutions' asset projects. Finland has lifted its objections over the issue of the negative reserve.