Brussels, 26/06/2006 (Agence Europe) - The meeting on 22 June of the Committee of Permanent Representatives from the EU Member States (Coreper) was unable to obtain an agreement on the proposal to adapt the system of own resources in the conclusions of the December 2005 European Council on the part on “own resources from the EU budget”, which only calls for compensation to the United Kingdom to be maintained as a whole in all spending, except for that on new Member States.
The United Kingdom, which already agreed to reduce the amount of its rebate by €10.5 bn for the 2007-13 period, in order to fully participate in the costs linked to enlargement of the countries that joined after 30 April 2004 (excluding agricultural market spending), think that the budgetary “gifts” afforded four other major EU net contributors, should not reduce its own refund. EU Heads of State and governments had decided to reduce the percentage of the revised VAT rates for Austria, Germany, Netherlands, Sweden and the Netherlands and to give them a gross annual reduction (calculated on the basis of the GNP) for the Netherlands (€605 million) and Sweden (€150 million). The United Kingdom considers that these two kinds of measures (reduction of the revised VAT rates and gross reduction of Dutch and Swedish contributions) should be included in the calculation of the UK correction. Most delegations, however, believe that these measures should not be considered when working out the British rebate. The European Commission is proposing that only the annual gross reduction (to the Netherlands and Sweden) are applied after working out the corrected amount to the United Kingdom. It is impossible to say at this juncture (26 June) whether Coreper will return to this case this week.