Member states to back budget cuts
Council seeks cuts to Commission proposal but MEPs will demand higher figures.
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Member states’ ambassadors to the European Union are today (18 July) likely to approve across-the-board cuts to the European Commission’s proposal for the EU’s budget for 2014.
The ambassadors’ political backing for the cuts would pave the way for the Council of Ministers to adopt its version of the next annual budget in a written procedure that ends on 2 September, without the need for a special meeting of national finance ministers, tentatively scheduled for 25 July.
The European Parliament will have 42 days from 2 September to come up with its version of the budget for 2014, the first year of the next multi-annual budget cycle (2014-20). The annual budget requires the backing of a weighted majority of member states and the approval of the Parliament. The first negotiations between MEPs and the Council have been scheduled for 16 October.
Difference of opinion
The Council’s draft version cuts the Commission’s proposal, made at the end of June, across all headings, albeit by modest amounts. The Council sets the EU’s commitments (undertakings to pay) at €141.77 billion, down from the €142.01bn proposed by the Commission, and payments (actual transfers of money) at €134.81bn, down from the Commission’s proposed €135.87bn.
The most severe cuts are to be made to cohesion payments, payments for growth and jobs programmes, and administration.
An official said that the reductions had been concentrated in programmes beset by problems over their performance in the past. In relative terms, the deepest cuts are to administration and foreign affairs.
The Parliament’s budget negotiators, led by Anne Jensen, a Danish Liberal, have already indicated that they will seek higher appropriations, to make full use of the maximum amounts permitted by the multi-annual financial framework.
Council officials argue that they had to reduce annual appropriations for 2014 to allow increased flexibility each year.
Budget experts from the member states reached agreement on the figures on Monday (15 July) on the basis of a proposal from Lithuania, the holder of the rotating presidency of the Council of Ministers. The Council’s position had to be discussed and agreed within a short period of time as the Commission’s proposal was made unusually late, on 26 June, because of delays in securing a political deal on the 2014-20 budget.