Brussels, 21/02/2005 (Agence Europe) - Whereas the vast majority of the Member States are in agreement with the European Commission to keep the current ceiling of cohesion and rural development policy aid (4% of national GDP) for 2007 to 2013, the Finance Ministers of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania adopted a joint declaration in Riga on 11 February, in which they stress that the calculation method used to set this ceiling is unfavourable to them. They are calling for the method for this ceiling to be changed to take account of the sharp economic growth of the Baltic States. “The Commission proposal puts our countries into a comparatively worse situation than the majority of other countries in terms of the aid intensity per inhabitant. At the moment capping is calculated using 2 years old data in such a way that it ignores the faster growth of our GDP in the coming years than the projected EU10 average. As a result out allocation will, in fact, be capped to a significantly lower level that that of 4% of GDP”, whilst “our contribution to the EU budget in 2007-2013 will be calculated annually according to the annual economic indicators”, they explain. They call for a “reasonable solution and a compromise to address this issue”.