MEPs launch attack on budget cut-backs

Date: 10/09/1998

By Rory Watson

THE annual battle over the EU's spending plans will be joined next week when MEPs criticise cut-backs worth 400 million ecu demanded by governments for 1999.

When the Austrian EU presidency presents the draft budget to the European Parliament in Strasbourg, German Socialist MEP Detlev Samland, the leading budgetary spokesman, will criticise the proposed cuts in budget lines for education, youth, information, job creation, research and development cooperation.

“This is a question of political credibility for both Parliament and Council,” he warned after the scale of the cut-backs had become clear. Samland insists that the two institutions must find a way to settle their differences over the budget before the Council of Ministers holds its second reading in November.

While both governments and the Parliament agree on the need for a 'rigorous' budget as the Union moves into the single currency era next year, the extent of their differences on particular issues will become clearer next month when MEPs vote on the budget. After that, the complex budgetary details become a matter for negotiation between the two sides before being finally adopted in December.

For many Euro MPs, the cuts run directly counter to several of their core priorities for next year's EU budget. These include provisions for education, training and research as part of the wider campaign to improve the Union's competitiveness and tackle unemployment, and the establishment of a coherent development policy capable of reaching internationally agreed targets.

During next week's discussions, Parliament will stress that overall management of the Union budget should be made more flexible. With the current seven-year financing package expiring at the end of next year, many MEPs believe that the negotiations due to start soon on the 2000-06 funding deal could be influenced by the shape of the 1999 budget.

In particular, they will repeat their claim that the traditional separation of expenditure into 'compulsory' and 'non-compulsory' categories should be ended.

While MEPs have considerable influence over the latter, they have virtually none over the former, which covers almost all agricultural spending. The 1999 budget, which will be the first denominated in euro rather than ecu, foresees spending of 96.9 billion euro.

There is also strong support within the Parliament for amending the Union's existing budgetary rules so that unused funds originally allocated to specific programmes may be redirected to other policies instead of being returned to member states.

Neither demand is new. But with governments set to seek parliamentary support for the new seven-year global financial package, the timing will strengthen MEPs' leverage.

Among Parliament's more immediate priorities will be a push to reinstate much of the 400 million ecu cut by EU budget ministers, particularly on social policies, when they last met in mid-July.

But despite their disagreements over certain aspects of next year's expenditure and of longer-term budgetary policy, both governments and MEPs will welcome the political agreement reached in July which has lifted the financial uncertainty clouding many EU-funded activities.

Scores of Union-backed programmes and the future of many non-governmental organisations involved in them were thrown into jeopardy earlier this year when the European Court of Justice ruled that they could not be supported from the EU budget because they had not been given the necessary legal approval.

At stake was almost 900 million ecu worth of short-term programmes to promote public health, fight poverty, aid developing countries and protect human rights.

Under the agreement, which will be adopted by the Parliament next week, it will be possible to finance pilot projects over two years with up to 16 million ecu a year, and support preparatory activities with up to 30 million ecu annually for no longer than three years.

“This is very good news as it stops the projects being sniped at from all angles and it will remove the annual hassle and haggle we have had in the past,” said a parliamentary source.