Parliament threatens Berlin deal

Date: 01/04/1999

By Tim Jones

THE newly assertive European Parliament is threatening to torpedo last week's hard-won Berlin budget deal unless governments restore some of the severe cuts made in the EU's 2000-06 spending programmes.

MEPs, whose confidence was boosted by the recent ejection of all 20 European Commissioners under parliamentary pressure, are furious that EU leaders have ignored their demands for a €5-billion cash reserve and slashed spending in their priority policy areas.

The Parliament's budget committee this week voted 15 to three against signing a new seven-year budget management deal with the Council of Ministers and the Commission. If endorsed by the full Parliament, this would effectively leave the Union without a spending framework for 2000-06.

The committee is calling on the Parliament's 13-15 April plenary session to invoke Article 203 of the Treaty of Rome for the first time since multi-annual spending plans were created in 1988.

This article allows MEPs to vote an increase in spending year-by-year on regional aid, transport, research, education, administration and even foreign assistance by as much as h6 billion compared with the Berlin deal.

" We are in a new situation when the Parliament, the Commission and the Council each have a role to play," said committee member, Dutch Liberal Laurens Jan Brinkhorst. "The time when the Council can unilaterally determine which road to take in Europe is over."

Prime ministers and presidents who negotiated through the night last week to lop €7 billion off the 2000-06 agricultural budget have already telephoned party leaders

to warn them against supporting the committee's approach when the issue is put to a vote in the full Parliament.

But feelings are running high. "The agreement is a provocation to the Parliament," said Spanish Socialist Joan Colom, who is steering the budgetary element of the Agenda 2000 package through the assembly. "They have not taken any account of our proposals."

The Parliament was opposed to the creation of separate budget lines for aid to EU applicant countries, a cut in the regional aid budget from €239 billion to €213 billion, and reduced contributions to the budget from Germany, Austria, the Netherlands and Sweden - all of which found their way into the Berlin compromise.

MEPs believe key initiatives have been unfairly squeezed by the €42-billion settlement for EU internal policies and the €32 billion for external actions.

" Once you exclude the framework programme for research, all the other programmes have been cut by 54% by the end of the period and that includes initiatives against unemployment, Trans-European Networks, cooperation with third-world countries, Asia and Latin America," said Colom.

Above all, MEPs were outraged that their proposal for a 'flexibility reserve' in the financial framework was allocated a maximum of only €200 million every year between 2000 and 2006.

The Parliament had called for annual allocations to the reserve of at least €700 million, and wanted them to increase in line with economic growth.

In a bid to defuse the row, German State Secretary for Finance Heiner Flassbeck met senior MEPs and the Commission's Director-General for budgets Jean-Paul Mingasson last night (31 March).

" We have sent a warning signal that, on the basis of what the Council has proposed, we cannot have an agreement," said Brinkhorst. "That does not mean that Parliament will suddenly go on a spending spree. It is not a question of responsibility versus irresponsibility. It is about what are the political priorities. We cannot accept that our political priorities can be ignored by the interests of individual countries."

EP Budget Committee votes against signing a new seven-year budget management deal with the Council and Commission.