MEPs agree to keep back part of next year’s budget

MEPS have voted to keep back around €400 million from next year’s EU budget in a bid to pressure the European Commission to spend public funds more effectively and ensure value for money.

Members of the Parliament’s budgets committee backed a call by UK centre-right MEP James Elles to put 30% of all available funds for certain budget ­areas into a reserve.

The money would be ­released only if the Commission can convince the Parliament that it has managed funds properly and worked according to political priorities.

Elles said that the Parliament was taking a "wholly new approach" focusing on ensuring value for money. He said the strategy was responding to the recognition that the 2007-13 budget deal was smaller than MEPs had expected. "We have to prioritise," he said. "If programmes aren’t working, they should be deleted."

The funds MEPs want to hold back apply across a wide range of budget areas including administration, research, citizenship and external relations.

The areas where funds are being withheld are those where problems in spending and control have been identified by organisations like the European Court of Auditors (ECA) and cost benefit studies commissioned by the Parliament itself.

The UK Conservative MEP said the approach should help contribute to efforts to getting a positive statement of assurance from the ECA when it examines the accounts for 2007 a few years later.

Elles said that the need to concentrate on political priorities was especially important in the run-up to the mid-term review of the budget in 2008-09. The budgets committee reversed some of the reductions in spending in certain areas (compared to the Commission’s original proposal) agreed by the ­Council of Ministers in July in its first reading. These areas are ones identified by the Parliament’s committees such as regional ­development funding.

Elles also proposed that part of the funding for special representatives dealing with foreign policy issues or regional crises should be withheld to pressure the Council to give the Parliament more say over how they are appointed.

An internal report says that the current arrangements for appointing them and methods for assessing their performance are "not sufficiently transparent" and are not subject to "adequate political and budgetary control".

Elles also said that MEPs were sympathetic to complaints about "arbitrary" cuts in staffing levels in the Commission and other EU institutions demanded by Council. MEPs have reversed these cuts for now. Staff unions representing all EU institutions are planning to go ahead with planned strike action, possibly next week, unless they receive support from the Commission and MEPs for their campaign to oppose the Council’s plans to shed 2,000 jobs.

Overall, the budgets ­committee voted for a budget for payments of €121.6 billion, €5.1bn more than the level agreed by the Council in July.

While Elles received broad support for his approach, a proposal to create reserves for 70-80 budget lines was scaled back to around 20 after some MEPs complained that they did not have the resources to monitor the Commission’s performance in so many areas.

The budgets committee will continue voting on the 2007 budget next week. It hopes to agree its first reading position at the plenary starting on 23 October but a final compromise with Council will take until ­December.

MEPS have voted to keep back around €400 million from next year’s EU budget in a bid to pressure the European Commission to spend public funds more effectively and ensure value for money.