Brussels, 28/10/2003 (Agence Europe) - The European Commission will try to outline the contents of the communication it is to present in November on the forthcoming financial perspectives, at a seminar this Wednesday. During this seminar, the Commission will try to reach a compromise on the new structure of the budget and the ceiling of expenditure to concretise the objectives of the EU. The Commission will not examine the "income" aspects of the budgets in detail, such as the creation, which is more or less a done deal, of a generalised correction mechanism limiting the net amount of each contributor Member State to a certain percentage of its GDP, and the somewhat pressing matter of the creation of a new European tax (the Commission is thinking more modestly of improving transparency, to give the European citizen a better idea of how their taxes fund the construction of Europe).
Ceiling for expenditure: the Commission will study three hypotheses: - a "low" option, around 1% of EU GDP corresponding to the amounts of the real budgets in payment appropriations in recent years; - a "conservatory" option of 1.27% of national GDP (or 1.24% of gross national income, GNI, according to the new Eurostat nomenclature); - an "ambitious" option around 1.3% of GDP. Commissioner Michaele Schreyer stressed that if the EU has new ambitions, "we must go beyond" the current limit set around 1%of GDP, whilst insisting that there is room for discussions between 1% and 1.24% of GDP.
Duration of financial perspectives: unlike Commissioners Franz Fischler and Michel Barnier, most of the college prefers a period of five years (2007-2011).
New political priorities of the EU: during its last seminar on 1 October, the Commission pronounced itself in favour, by a small majority, of continuing along the broad guidelines of current regional policy (EUROPE of 2 and 3 October). The Commission has also stressed the need to reorganise the various categories of the budget to accord greater priority to the implementation of the strategies of Lisbon (growth, competitiveness, employment) and Göteborg (sustainable development). The Commission's working document maintains the hypothesis of an initial heading entitled "growth and competitiveness" containing most internal policy instruments (except the environment). The Commission has still to tackle the issue of whether some structural actions should be added (objectives 2 and 3), although Mr Barnier would rather not have regional policy cut into two. A second heading would be devoted to "the convergence, cohesion and solidarity policy", with at least the structural funds of Objective 1, the cohesion fund, the European social fund, Interreg and the Solidarity fund of the EU as the victims of natural disasters. The third heading, "sustainable development", would cover agricultural expenditure (market and rural development), fisheries and the environment. At the last seminar, the Commission announced its willingness to create an "area of liberty, security and justice" heading, and replace the "external actions" heading with one entitled "the European Union in the world", with two novelties: inclusion of European Development Funds (EDF) and the current section 7 (pre-accession).
Another innovations that has broad consensus: section on "administration and other inter-institutional spending" which will cover the necessary loans for paying pensions for European officials and spending on the institutions other than the Commission. Therefore, the expenditure of Commission personnel will be directly include in each of the budget sections (in compliance with the new principle of the budget based on activity).