Brussels, 05/10/2006 (Agence Europe) - The Parliamentary budgets committee will need further meeting, on 10 October, to finalise the position it wishes to put to the European Parliament, which is due to hold its first reading vote on the draft 2007 budget on 26 October.
After three working sessions from 3-5 October, the members of the EP budgets committee will, on 10 October, have to vote on the amendments to budgetary columns 4 (External actions) and 5 (Administrative expenditure), the very ones which the three Community institutions find most divisive. According to sources, the budgets committee is expected to align itself with the European Commission in rejecting the Council's first reading decision to reduce the administrative spending devoted to recruitment of new officials (see EUROPE 9259 and 9233). The EP would seem to have heard the call from Budget Commissioner Dalia Grybauskaité, who, in September, criticised the Council's “disproportionate reductions” in administrative funding adopted in July and warned that the Commission would not be able to recruit anyone in 2007 if the Member States' proposal was sustained.
The budgets committee was expected not to recommend the use of the flexibility instrument (which permits the ceiling on a financial perspective column to be exceeded by up to €200 million) for external expenditure, despite there being little room for manoeuvre in the funding of certain traditional EP priorities. On credit appropriations, usually the issue that creates most conflict before the second reading in Council in November, the EP would appear to be considering an increase of just over €5 billion in the total budget set by the Council in first reading, taking the 2007 budget to a level corresponding to 1.04% of EU27 GNP. In July, the Council decided on a draft budget of €114.61 billion in credit appropriations, or 0.98% of EU27 GNP.
Elsewhere, the budgets committee has allowed for funds to be granted to interesting pilot projects, such as the creation of a terrorism database or setting up a travelling theatre which would provide a place for debate on Europe (the “Euroglobe” project).
Following the budgets committee vote on 10 October, all three EU institutions will meet on 18 October, to try to reconcile their positions on the draft 2007 budget. The first reading vote in the European Parliament will take place in Strasbourg on 26 October. (lc)