Hopes of pre-election deal on Socrates II dashed

Date: 29/04/1999

By Tim Jones

HOPES that the outgoing European Parliament would approve a new seven-year education spending plan for the EU at its last session next week have been dashed.

The failure of governments and MEPs to settle a long-running dispute over the funding of the Socrates II programme before the June Euro-elections means no further progress can be made before the autumn.

The Parliament's culture committee has approved a report by German Christian Democrat MEP Doris Pack in which she called for €2.5 billion to be allocated to Socrates II in 2000-06. The extra cash was to be earmarked for student grants, an extension of the programme which covers adult education and language learning, and new schemes covering lifelong learning and multimedia training.

However, even before EU leaders reached a deal on the whole Union 2000-06 budget at last month's Berlin summit, education ministers approved a budget for Socrates II of just €1.55 billion - much to MEPs' dismay.

An informal meeting last week between Pack, Germany's Deputy Ambassador to the Union Jochen Grünhage and Domenico Lenarduzzi of the Commission Directorate-General for education, training and youth (DGXXII) confirmed that neither side was prepared to move.

However, one major obstacle standing in the way of a deal should be cleared within weeks, once governments and MEPs come to a new budget management accord ('inter-institutional agreement') for 2000-06.

They have not yet settled how much cash should be allocated to internal policy spending, which includes education. The German presidency has offered an extra €1.4 billion over seven years, but this would have to be shared out to cover key policy issues such as transport and employment creation as well as education.

The row over Socrates II is the only one of a series of disputes between EU governments and MEPs which will not be resolved ahead of the elections. The full Parliament will approve four laws next week which have been held up by 'conciliation' talks between ministers and MEPs.

Moves sponsored by Danish Anti-Federalist MEP Ulla Sandbæk to tighten rules governing the amount of pesticide residue that can be permitted in baby food will be approved by the full Parliament after the Commission submitted new proposals allowing infant formulae to contain only 0.01 milligramme of pesticide residue per kilogramme.

Similarly, concessions made by the Council of Ministers to German Socialist MEP Annemarie Kuhn have ensured that legislation on consumer guarantees against poor-quality goods will be ratified next week.

Two other laws on the freedom of establishment of craft workers and statistical declarations by companies carrying out trade within the EU will also be approved.