Showdown looms over EU aid for Kosovo

Date: 09/12/1999

By Simon Taylor

THE European Parliament is threatening to withhold approval of reconstruction aid for Kosovo next year in a bid to force EU finance ministers to increase the budget for foreign policy initiatives.

Following this week's meeting of the assembly's budget committee, MEPs warned that unless member states demonstrated a willingness to compromise over the next few days, they would only allocate €140 million for reconstruction in Kosovo when they vote on the Union's spending plans for 2000 at their plenary session next week.

The threatened move is aimed at forcing the Council of Ministers to find other ways of funding the gap of at least €220 million by raising overall spending on external relations.

EU budget ministers have so far categorically refused to do this, arguing that the €360 million needed can be found by shifting unused funds from other foreign policy projects or by using money set aside in a special emergency reserve created precisely to deal with unexpected crises such as Kosovo.

However, German centre-right MEP Reimer Böge said that if the Parliament only approved €140 million of the total required for Kosovo, member states and parliamentarians would have to hold fresh talks early next year to decide how to raise the rest of the funds needed for reconstruction projects.

At the committee meeting this week, MEPs reacted angrily to the latest draft budget, drawn up last week, which does not envisage any increase in overall spending on foreign policy initiatives and proposes instead to find the money by reallocating unspent funds from other initiatives.

They also insisted that the EU should make a financial commitment to fund the costs of reconstruction in Kosovo for four to five years to reflect long-terms needs. "If we do not, we will have the same problems again next year over money for Kosovo," said British Socialist MEP Neena Gill.

Parliamentarians are angry that the European Commission signed up to multi-annual financing in the recent Kosovo donors' conference and then refused to reflect this strategy in its own budget proposals.

Gill acknowledged that EU governments were reluctant to discuss multi-annual funding, but insisted that it was up to budget ministers to break the deadlock by offering concessions.

"We are putting the ball firmly back in their court. Unless we get a multi-annual agreement and a revision of the financial perspective we will approve the budget without the Kosovo money," she said.

She added, however, that MEPs would be prepared to use some of the €200 million in a special budgetary reserve known as the 'flexibility instrument' to help fund reconstruction, provided budget ministers agreed to increase overall spending on foreign affairs projects and to provide funding for more than one year.

The European Parliament is threatening to withhold approval of reconstruction aid for Kosovo in a bid to force EU finance ministers to increase the budget for foreign policy initiatives.