Brussels, 04/03/2004 (Agence Europe) - On Wednesday, most of the ambassadors of the Member States of the EU criticised the new classification of expenditure proposed by the European Commission for the forthcoming financial perspectives. The Committee of Permanent Representatives of the Member States to the EU (Coreper) reacted frostily to the Commission's appeal for increased flexibility for the Community budget, to be able to react more quickly to unexpected political or economic occurrences.
Next week (10 March), Coreper will embark upon more sensitive debates on the volume and allocation of funds, starting with the first heading "Competitiveness and Cohesion". Discussions at EU ambassador-level will continue in April and May with a view to presenting a Coreper report to the June European Council.
New budget structure: the representatives of Germany, France, the Netherlands, Denmark and Luxembourg expressed doubts as to the advantages the new classification has to offer compared to the existing one. Some of these delegations feel that the new presentation lacks transparency and balance. Luxembourg said that it would be preferable to start from the basis of the current structure, adapting it to the new policies. The Spanish representative welcomed how the EU's new political priorities were presented, but asked for the current budgetary classification to be maintained. Of those in the Commission's camp, Italy sad that the structure proposed was better than the one in force today.
In its communication of 10 February on the forthcoming financial framework, the Commission suggested modifying the current structure of the budget to reflect the EU's new priorities (competitiveness and cohesion for sustainable development, sustainable management and protection of natural resources, citizenship, freedom, security and justice and the EU as a global partner).
Improving budgetary leeway: discussions revealed that most of the Member States (Germany, Sweden, Denmark, United Kingdom and Austria, notably) are opposed to greater flexibility. France said it did not share the Commission's philosophy in this field. Germany, Spain and Portugal said that the current mechanisms have proved their efficiency.
The Commission is proposing to replace the current flexibility instrument with "new flexibility in terms of re-allocation of funds", and to create two new funds: -an "adjustment to growth fund" of a maximum 1 billion EUR a year under the heading of "sustainable growth" expenditure; -an additional envelope of 1 billion EUR made available from funds committed but not spent from both cohesion instruments (Feder and European Social Fund).