Enlargement: European Parliament and Council fail to agree on accession budget, April 2003

The European Parliament and the Council failed to reach an agreement on the financing of enlargement at a meeting in Athens on 1 April 2003. However, the European Parliament insisted that it is determined to give its assent to the accession of ten candidate countries in a vote to be held on 9 April 2003.

The meeting in Athens had been convened in an attempt to resolve the dispute between the Council and the Parliament over the application of the long term budgetary figures, known in Eurospeak as the 'Financial Perspective'. At a plenary session of the European Parliament (EP) in Brussels on 27 March 2003, MEPs refused to ratify the Treaty in its current form because it claimed that the deal on the financing of enlargement, attached to the Treaty as Annex XV, infringes on the EP's budgetary rights and power of co-decision by incorporating the budgetary transfers to the new Member States. MEPs also argued that the Treaty discriminates against future Member States, because their budget funds are immovably fixed by it, in contrast to funding for current Member States. Annex XV sets out the budget dealing with agriculture, structural policy, internal policies and administration and establishes maximum spending levels for the ten new Member States for each year until 2006 according to the figures negotiated at the European Council in Copenhagen in December 2002.

Attempts to resolve the differences took place between the European Parliament, the Council and the European Commission in a meeting of the trialogue following the plenary session vote but once these failed a further meeting was organised in Athens. However this failed because the Council refused to give in to the Parliament's demand to increase the budget for internal policies by €600 million in favour of the future Member States. The Greek Presidency was not willing to go beyond a €300 million increase.

A meeting will take place on 2 April 2003 between the 15 EU ambassadors (the COREPER) before the European Parliament decides how to proceed. Whilst the European Parliament maintains that it will vote in favour of accession on 9 April 2003, a prerequisite for the signature of the Accession Treaty in Athens on 19 April, the Council's refusal to adjust the Financial Perspective sufficiently might lead the Parliament to renounce the Inter-institutional Agreement, at the very least it will lead to a serious deterioration in Parliament-Council relations. Reimer Boge, Vice President of the European Parliament's Budgetary Committee, warned that:

'Anchoring the budget figures agreed at Copenhagen in Annex XV of the Accession Treaty - in other words writing them into the EU's basic laws - is a provocative way of going on, and an attempt by the Council to whittle away the rights of the European Parliament in budgetary matters, and to do them permanent damage'

Links:
European Parliament:
	01.04.03:	Daily Notebook: No agreement between Parliament and Council on accession budget
	27.03.03:	Daily Notebook: Enlargement - the budget question
European Commission:
	DG Enlargement: Weekly Newsletter: Parliament still concerned over Accession Treaty
	DG Enlargement: FAQs - Budgetary costs
European People's Party:
	01.04.03:	Press Release: Financing EU enlargement: Council fails to meet Parliament's demands
European Sources Online: Topic Guides
	Enlargement of the European Union

Helen Bower

Compiled: Wednesday, 2 April 2003

The European Parliament and the Council failed to reach an agreement on the financing of enlargement at a meeting in Athens on 1 April 2003.