Clash looms over budget payments

Compromise deal backed by MEPs.

A compromise on the European Union’s 2013 budget adopted by the European Parliament yesterday (12 December) sets the stage for a tough battle with the member states over payments. 

The budget deal was approved at a meeting of interior ministers from the EU member states on Thursday (6 December); by the Parliament’s budgets committee in Strasbourg on Monday (10 December), with 35 voting in favour and five against; and by MEPs in plenary yesterday, with 514 voting in favour, 68 against and 82 abstentions.

The compromise, struck on 29 November, delays until next year payment of a third of a €9bn top-up request for the 2012 budget made in October by Janusz Lewandowski, the European commissioner for financial programming and budget; €6bn is to be paid this year.

The 2013 budget foresees €150.9bn in commitments and €132.8bn in payments (the European Commission’s proposal was for €151.1bn and €137.8bn). The commitments figure is closer to the figure proposed by the Commission and backed by the Parliament, while the payments figure is closer to the position of the Council of Ministers.

Lewandowski’s top-up request had derailed a first attempt to agree the draft 2013 budget by negotiators from the Council and the Parliament. But by pushing €2.9bn in payments over into next year, the compromise also makes a clash inevitable between the Council on one side and the Commission and the Parliament on the other.

Lewandowski warned that the budget would not cover the EU’s spending next year. “The pressure on the 2013 EU budget will be tremendous,” he said. “There is a serious risk that we will run out of funds early in the course of next year. I am concerned that by systematically cutting the Commission’s estimates, the Council transforms the EU annual budget into a budget for nine to ten months.”

Cohesion funding

The €2.9bn primarily comprises payment requests from member states for cohesion funding that have not yet been verified by the Commission, and payment requests dating back to the previous multiannual budget period, 2000-06.

The three sides agreed the wording of a political declaration attached to the budget, with no legal standing, that the payment needs from 2012 would be swiftly addressed in the new year.

“The Commission undertakes to present at an early stage in 2013 a draft amending budget devoted to the sole purpose of covering the 2012 suspended claims as soon as the suspensions are lifted, and the other pending legal obligations without prejudice to the proper implementation of the 2013 budget,” the guarantee reads. “To ensure sound and accurate EU budgeting, the European Parliament and the Council will take positions on this draft amending budget as quickly as possible in order to cover any outstanding gap.”

Alain Lamassoure, a centre-right French MEP who chairs the Parliament’s budgets committee, said that the situation could have been avoided if national budget ministers had been informed in good time by other levels of government of their payment requests.

He also stressed the EU’s obligation to reimburse member states for expenditure from EU programmes. He said that it was unacceptable that such requests lead to a re-negotiation of expenditure at the end of the budget year.

Giovanni La Via, a centre-right Italian MEP who is the Parliament’s rapporteur on the 2013 budget, said the plenary vote was “an important political signal” of MEPs’ “determination to ensure that the EU has all the resources needed to implement its policies properly”.

“The €6bn agreed to partially cover 2012 payments, as well as the commitments in the 2013 budget, will guarantee investment in growth and job creation, as will the additional funds provided by the Council in 2013, wherever there is a need,” he said.

“We insisted on this during the negotiations and we got it.”

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