Strasbourg, 04/09/2003 (Agence Europe) - The European Parliament has approved the draft supplementary and amending budget (SAB) No3/2003 which allows Member State contributions to be cut by EUR 6.4 billion for the current budget (see EUROPE of 9 May 2003 on the initial Commission proposal). The report on this by Göran Färm (PES, Sweden) which was adopted in Strasbourg on Wednesday criticises the level of surplus for 2002 (EUR 7.4 billion of which one billion euros was already included in the budget when the budget for 2003 was adopted last year), but notes "considerable progress" compared to the situation in 2001 (surplus of EUR 15 billion).
The Parliament accepted the changes decided recently by the Council, which refused EUR 10 million for supplementary aid in the fisheries sector (in the context of the SAB No2/2003) and EUR 350,000 under the coverage of costs for meetings of the Committee of the Regions (SAB No2/2003). This specifies the fall in contributions from Member States will also depend on the financial breakdown of budgetary compensation in favour of the United Kingdom, which will be the subject of a separate amending budget (draft SAB No4 recently presented by the Commission).