The Council and Parliament are set to be at odds over the 2013 budget. The Council position rejected the European Commission’s proposal for a 6.8% increase in commitment appropriations and called to limit the payments increase to 2.79% compared to 2012 and the increase of commitments to 1.27%. The 2013 budget is important as it is the last year of the current multiannual financial framework – the Commission and Parliament view the €8.9-billion increase as necessary to meet prior EU payment commitments.
Budget negotiations in the past few years have been dominated by disagreements over how to calculate the level of payments in the budget. The budget committee called on member states that have doubts to clarify the Commission’s estimates quickly in order to reach a timely agreement. MEPs tried to convene a meeting with the Danish Presidency to reach a common understanding on payments, however no representative from the Presidency showed up.
The suggested budget for 2013 is €151 billion in commitment appropriations (i.e. +2 % compared to the 2012 budget) and €138 billion in payment appropriations (i.e. +6.8 % compared to the 2012 budget). the Budget Committee points out that the increase in payments is necessary as payment levels were kept artificially low in previous years (payment of bills were postponed to later years and this is not an option in 2013.) There are two different types of budget appropriations: commitments and payments. Commitments refer to how much the EU may commit itself to spend (e.g. sign a contract or start a tender procedure) in a certain year. The payment level regulates the actual payments made for that year.
The ENVI Committee in its draft opinion on the budget notes “a decrease of EUR 61 million of operational appropriations proposed under Title 17 for Public Health actions compared to the 2012 voted amount of EUR 334 million.” MEPs warns that decreasing resources allocated to the Public Health Programme limits the number of activities in the Member States to promote public health. In absolute terms the Council position represents a decrease -200 000 in commitments (+1.49%) and a decrease in appropriations by -1 700 000 (-7.96%).
The Council position focussed payment increases on:
– sustainable growth, in line with the Europe 2020 agenda,
– cohesion, where the payments would increase by 8,07%,
– freedom, security and justice.
This has sparked some criticism as the Commission had proposed increases in the areas of research and innovation to boost economic growth and job-creation. Alain Lamassoure chair of the Parliament’s Budget Committee underlined the contradiction between the agreement among EU Heads of state, calling for a “Growth Pact” with extra money for growth, research and innovation, and the severe cuts in next year`s budget.
The Parliament’s main negotiator for the 2013 budget, Giovanni La Via, said “I would also like to understand why – on the one hand – individual Member States asked the Commission for EU funds to be spent in their countries, and – on the other hand – gave ‘no’ as an answer when they were asked to fund these actions”.
President Barroso wrote to Heads of State to underline concerns that the Council Position could be sending the wrong messages to citizens in times of financial crisis and undermine credibility of the EU. “The annual budget sets the amount of legally-binding commitments to citizens, SMEs, researchers, farmers, students and regions that the European Union will support. These commitments create obligations to be honoured later through appropriate payments according to agreed rules and the actual implementation of the programme,” the letter stated.
Next steps
The three-way budget negotiations (triologue between Commission, Council and Parliament) started on 9 July. MEPs will vote in committee in early October on a compromise with the Counc il and in plenary on 23 October. The Cyprus presidency will present amendments at the end of the October to Member States. If there no agreement is reached Council/Parliament conciliation talks will take place from 24 October to 13 November, with a view to approving the final budget at the 19-22 November plenary session. The negotiations are expected to be especially delicate as the Parliament and Council are negotiating in parallel with more difficult haggling over the EU’s budget for 2014-2020.
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