Member states benefit from budget refunds

Date: 20/11/1997

By Rory Watson

BILLIONS of ecu will be handed back to EU governments next month as a result of underspending on a range of policies over the past year.

The refund follows the latest update of the Union's 1997 budget, which also includes an increase in staff for the Court of Auditors and additional officials to work in the European Commission's consumer affairs department promoting food safety.

Under the established arrangements for compensating member states for any unspent budget contributions when expenditure - particularly on the agricultural policy - is lower than expected, the Commission will reduce national capitals' projected December payments into EU coffers by almost 4.4 billion ecu.

The biggest beneficiary, in line with its role as the Union's major paymaster, will be Germany, with 1.3 billion ecu returning to Bonn. There will also be significant rebates for France (865 million ecu), Italy (642 million ecu), Spain (368 million ecu) and the UK (349 million ecu).

Other member states will also benefit, although to a lesser extent, with reductions for the Netherlands (199 million ecu), which is pressing for a long-term cut in its annual budget contributions, Belgium (131 million ecu), Sweden (108 million ecu) and Austria (106 million ecu).

After the rebates, which follow similar refunds in recent years, the 1997 Union budget will be nearer to 82 billion ecu rather than the 87 billion ecu originally approved by EU governments and the European Parliament last December.

Under the deal, the Commission will be given 35 new posts to strengthen its consumer protection service as part of its efforts to prevent any repetition of the BSE saga and to improve coordination of the revamped scientific committees which will advise the institution on health matters.

At the same time, the Court of Auditors, which is facing an increasing demand on its resources as the EU tightens up its financial controls, will be given 23 extra staff this year and a further 25 in the 1998 budget.

But the overall figure is considerably lower than the 125 posts originally sought by the auditors and the Parliament has made clear that it has no intention of agreeing to any further personnel increases for the institution for four years.

Although MEPs gave the go-ahead for the member states' rebates and the staff increases at their October plenary session in Strasbourg, the 1997 amending budget was only formally signed by the European Parliament President José María Gil-Robles last week - just hours before the deadline for calculating member states' December contributions to the cost of EU policies.

While some suspected the delay was part of a ritual budgetary power play between the Parliament and EU governments, the real reason was more mundane: Gil-Robles could not sign the necessary paperwork earlier because he had an unplanned appendicitis operation followed by an official visit to Austria.