Crisis meeting over budget battle

Date: 26/11/1998

By Rory Watson

EU BUDGET ministers and MEPs are to meet early next month in a last-ditch attempt to settle their differences over the Union's spending plans for next year.

The meeting on 8 December will be held just days before the European Parliament votes on the 1999 budget at a plenary session in Strasbourg.

If the stalemate continues, MEPs are likely to defy governments and approve a budget of 98.6 billion euro, including 3.75 billion euro which would be put into a special reserve fund, despite claims by member states that this would be illegal.

MEPs are using the reserve fund threat to bolster their case for a greater say in the Union's annual expenditure when the present arrangements are renegotiated next spring.

Budget ministers' governments offered the Parliament a small olive branch this week by committing themselves to "some elements of flexibility" when the new budgetary agreement is drawn up next year.

But they stressed that the extent of this flexibility would depend on the outcome of negotiations on a multiannual financial framework for the Union up to 2006.

Initial reactions from MEPs suggest this offer is not firm enough to resolve the dispute. "This says everything and nothing. We will have to think very carefully to see what this all adds up to. It does not appear to provide the basis for a deal at the moment," said one.

The power play is overshadowing the details of next year's budget, which was trimmed at this week's ministerial meeting to 96.9 billion euro in commitments and 85.5 billion euro in payments.