Brussels, 14/10/2004 (Agence Europe) - On Wednesday, the European Commission adopted a proposed modification to the 2004 budget, which includes a provision for 3.4 billion EUR in additional payment appropriations under the structural funds. After the discussion within the College of Commissioners, it was decided that the request, which was initially for 4.3 billion EUR, should be reduced to the lower figure.
Commissioner Michaele Schreyer confirmed to the press on Tuesday that this entirely novel situation for the structural funds was due to the recent acceleration in the Member States' consumption of their credits. "The Member States have made great efforts to improve the management of structural funds", said Ms Schreyer, before welcoming this "positive and satisfactory" situation. According to the explanations provided in this draft amending budget (Nr 11/2004), the payment appropriations for the structural funds reached a total of 21 billion EUR as of 30 September 2004, which represents 75% of planned expenditure. On 30 September last year, credits had been paid to a total of just 14.3 billion EUR. Over the last two years, the Commission has paid between 50 and 60% of the initially programmed credits.
According to Ms Schreyer, the Member States should not be surprised by this proposal, because when the 2004 budget was adopted last year, Council and Parliament adopted a declaration calling upon the Commission to present an amending budget should the execution of payments for structural funds significantly improve.
This favourable development should continue in 2005. The Commissioner therefore called upon the budgetary authority (Parliament and Council) to restore the level of credits for the structural actions proposed in May in the preliminary draft budget for 2005. This is also what the European Parliament plans to do at its first reading, scheduled for 28 October in Strasbourg. The Council decided last July (first reading of the draft 2005 budget) to reduce the payment appropriations for the structural funds by 3 billion EUR. "We now have some very convincing arguments with which to persuade the Council" to increase credits, concluded Ms Schreyer.
The financial effort asked of the Member States could be as much as 1 billion EUR
The total extra credits asked of the Member States (in the draft amending budget) is likely to be as high as 1 billion EUR, given 2.3 billion EUR in savings realised in two other large fields: -the volume of credits for agricultural market expenditure has been reduced by 1.1 billion EUR (actually by 1.6 billion EUR, but Community provisions prevent over 1.1 billion EUR for being cancelled off), due to savings made in the cereals sectors (smaller refunds for maize-based products and starch), sugar (fewer exports than planned), textile plants (less aid to cotton), the wine sector (the crisis distillation mechanism was not used), milk and dairy products, and beef, sheep and goat meat; -revenue from traditional own resources were overestimated by 1.3 billion EUR (especially for customs duty).