Brussels, 02/07/2002 (Agence Europe) - In the framework of the preparation for the first reading by the Council on the draft budget for 2003 (to take place on 18 July in Brussels), the Council's Budgetary Committee agreed on the need to moderately increase payment credits (+1.36% compared to the budget for 2002, as opposed to the +2.7% in the Commission's preliminary draft, by making cuts in the following areas: agriculture (EUR-288 with a cut of EUR 275 in the most important chapters); structural funds (EUR - 525 million); Sapard and Ispa programmes in support of candidate countries in section 7 (EUR - 300 million). According to several diplomatic sources, Council experts have taken into account the problems of bad execution of loans in structural funds and pre-accession spending and the significant margin that's opened up under the section 1 ceiling (agriculture), as well as imperatives for budgetary rigour needed in some large Member States that have to reduce their public deficits.
The Commission proposal also aims to reduce the flexibility instrument for funding restructuring funds for Spanish and Portuguese boats (EUR 27 million not taken into account in the 2002 budget); and institutional expenditure linked to enlargement EUR 74 million has not been kept back at this stage. This result does not endanger the decision to be taken by Coreper at its 10 July meeting, at which it will adopt a draft budget for 2003 to be submitted to Budget Council Ministers.
As for institutional expenditure, the budgetary committee has reduced the demands of all the institutions (with the exception of the Parliament, which the Council will not be examining because of the inter-institutional agreement of 1999), and especially those involving new posts requested by the Commission (see other article). Council expenses will see the rate of increase be brought to 7%, EUR 430 million (as opposed to +11.6% as in the preliminary draft budget) and includes a sufficient amount for expenses involved in the translation of Community acquis publications. The budgetary committee accepted 236 of the 288 new posts linked to enlargement, which were requested by the Council.
An increase in the available margins for other sections was also envisaged by reducing: loans for the "intelligent energy" and "Fiscalis" programmes and the Trans-European transport networks in section 3 (internal policies); funds initially earmarked for Latin America, the Tacis Programme, funds for fighting against diseases and the fishing agreements and section 4 (external action).