Britain takes its time to unveil new budget plan

By Anna McLauchlin

Date: 15/09/05

There will be no UK presidency proposal on the next EU budget round until at least November, it was confirmed yesterday (14 September).

At a meeting of EU ambassadors, the presidency said that it would wait until after an informal gathering of heads of state and government on 27-28 October at Hampton Court to release proposals on the financial perspectives for 2007-13.

Tony Blair's government has been discussing the possibilities for a compromise draft with each member state.

But officials said that only two- thirds of the planned bilateral talks have been held to date.

On Sunday (11 September) the row over agricultural spending resurfaced when the French Agriculture Minister Dominique Bussereau accused the British of being isolated in their calls to slash the cash for farmers under the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP).

Talks on the budget stalled in June, with many observers pinning the blame on the UK for insisting on CAP reform in return for cutting its annual €4.6 billion rebate.

The Commission has called on ambassadors to reach a 'partial' agreement on 35 programmes affected by the budget.

This means that the Council of Ministers' position would be fixed for any non-budgetary aspects of the legislative proposals and that any budgetary elements would remain open for when the perspectives are finalised.

Partial general approaches have already been agreed on the Galileo, Marco Polo II, PROGRESS and MEDIA 2007 programmes.

Several programmes that run across both budgetary periods have also been approved.

The UK EU Presidency will probably not issue proposals for the new Financial Perspectives, 2007-2013 until November following an informal European Council, 27-28 October 2005.