Brussels, 11/02/2004 (Agence Europe) - The Ecofin Council will hold an initial discussion on the financial perspectives at its informal meeting of 2 and 3 April, the Irish Finance Minister Charlie McCreevy confirmed on Tuesday (see yesterday's EUROPE, pages 7, 8 and 11). The Irish Presidency will then present a "road map" for the continuation of negotiations within the various configurations of the Council (Ecofin, JHA, General Affairs, European Council). These negotiations "will not be concluded under this Presidency, or the next", said Mr McCreevy. When asked about the impact that a reduction of European funding would have had at the time of Ireland's accession to the EU, he said that "the European Union's contribution has been a key factor in Ireland's success (...), which has risen from 70% of the average level of wealth in the EU to 100%". The cohesion policy is one of the founding factors of Europe, based on the "contribution of the richest countries to the development of the poorest regions", he said.
At the sidelines of the Ecofin Council, the German and French Finance Ministers stuck to their guns, calling for strictness in the Community budget. "In the context of the various stability plans, it is hard to imagine spending more on this to limit expenditure on that", said the French Minister, Francis Mer. His German counterpart, Hans Eichel, pleaded for the EU's obsolete priorities to be reviewed, rather than increasing the ceiling of expenditure. He recommended greater subsidiarity of cohesion expenditure, stating that Germany would rather take back responsibility for the development of the former East German Länder than send money to Brussels and then get it back.
The Spanish Minister, Rodrigo Rato, relativised the intransigence of the six net contributors which have called for a limit of 1% of GNI (the two other net contributors are Italy and, to a lesser extent, Denmark: Ed). He stressed the fact that negotiations on the financial perspectives will take at least two years: it is natural for "positions to be very firm at the start and become more flexible later", he said. He feels it would be hard to bring the European Union's expenditure below 1.24% of Community GDP maintaining its current policies, but with 25 Member States. To call these policies into question "would be an unprecedented step backwards", he said.