Brussels, 28/11/2005 (Agence Europe) - The UK Presidency would envisage reducing the compromise proposal presented in June by the Luxembourg Presidency by almost 30 billion euros in the financial perspectives 2007-2013. With a view to an agreement at the European Council of 15 and 16 December, the Presidency will officially present a numbered compromise before the conclave of Foreign Affairs Ministers on 7 December. The reductions proposed, according to some sources, will above all affect the structural funds, but also agricultural spending, increasing (as the Commission suggests) the modulation mechanism to allow a reduction of aid to farmers to the benefit of rural development programmes. These reductions will at the same time help avoid an increase in the British rebate (it risks doubling by around 2010-2011 if the situation is unchanged) and reduce the contributions of certain countries, including the Netherlands and Sweden, who had complained of giving too much to the EU budget. The compromise will envisage a total budget for the EU of 27 of 846 billion euros in commitment credits (2007-2013), which is 1.03% of the gross national product (GNP) of the EU. The compromise which was rejected by the European Council in June by the UK, Netherlands, Sweden, Finland and Spain, planned on 871.5 billion euros in commitment credits (1.06 % of the EU's GNP), of which 309.6 billion were for the structural funds and cohesion fund (or 0.376 % of the EU's GNP).
Poland has protested against the intentions of the UK Presidency: “all the new Member States of the EU have enormous needs (…). We need investment in infrastructures, technical innovation and education”, said regional development minister Grazyna Gesicka on Monday. She added that “cutting these funds to Poland and other new Member States would be a mistake for the whole EU”. In her view, Poland “is capable of spending the 60 billion euros which were planned for it in the Luxembourg proposal”.
“The most urgent matter is reaching an agreement in December", commented Commission spokesperson Johannes Laitenberger on Monday, adding that everyone “must share the burden”, while it is “obvious that is not those who have the greatest need who should make the greatest sacrifices”.
After holding talks on Sunday evening (in the margins of the EuroMed Summit) with the Spanish Prime Minister José Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, Tony Blair, planned to travel on Thursday to Tallinn to meet his counterparts from the three Baltic states and on Friday to Budapest for discussions with the Prime Ministers of the informal group of Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia.