MEPs prepare to call for greater budget increase

The Commission’s budget proposal will now be fought over by the European Parliament, many of whose members want an increase in payments beyond the proposed 6.8%, and the member states, many of which want the EU’s budget frozen, or cut in line with their own austerity budgets.

Giovanni La Via, an Italian centre-right MEP who will draft the Parliament’s views on the bulk of the 2013 budget (the part comprising Commission spending), called for a “realistic” – that is, higher – budget that would reflect actual spending obligations. He echoed fears voiced by Janusz Lewandowski, the European commissioner for financial programming and budget, that the 6.8% increase in payments might be insufficient to meet all commitments already made under the EU’s cohesion and agricultural policy.

La Via and Alain Lamassoure, a French centre-right MEP who chairs the Parliament’s budgets committee, have asked for a meeting with representatives of the European Commission and the Council of Ministers to clarify what payments are likely to come due under the 2013 budget. The meeting will take place next month

Increase in commitments

But La Via is not just seeking an increase in the budget for payments. He thinks commitments should also be increased. “We want to have more growth, more Europe, not less Europe”. “If we want to do that, we can’t then freeze our commitment appropriations,” he said.

“This is a defensive budget, but we should go on the offensive,” said Jutta Haug, a German centre-left MEP and vice-chair of the budgets committee.

But Richard Ashworth, the leader of the UK Conservatives in the European Parliament, said that any increase exceeding the rate of inflation was “unrealistic and unacceptable”. “As is the nature of European politics, this may well be an opening bargaining position from the Commission,” he said. “However, it is not a sensible approach to negotiations to submit a claim so outlandish that it can only provoke anger or incredulity.”

A national diplomat agreed with that assessment. “To increase by 7% is completely out of synch with these austere times,” he said. “It’s not smart politics.”

‘Spending out of control’

Mark Hoban, a junior UK finance minister, said that the Commission’s spending had got out of control. “I don’t know how else you would describe a 6.8% increase,” he said.

He added that the British government believed that “spending in Europe should be curbed” and pointed to administration as one area where costs could be reduced. “We should be seeing restraint,” he said. “That should apply across the board.”

He said: “It is wholly inconsistent with their call for restraint in member states’ spending, with welfare benefits being cut and overall spending going down.

José Manuel Barroso, the president of the European Commission, criticised the British government for demanding an increase in funding for the EU’s controversial nuclear-fusion project (ITER) while attacking other increases in the draft budget.

The draft budget foresees an additional €360 million for ITER, to be taken from the EU’s research programme. La Via said that this was unacceptable. “We have to keep a close eye on what’s happening [in budget negotiations] so that we don’t penalise these research projects, which are the only ones that can bring competitiveness to our companies,” he said. Neelie Kroes, the European commissioner for the digital agenda, managed to reduce the cuts to information technology funding sought by Lewandowski to pay for ITER from €150m to €80m.

‘Inconceivable’

Jan Kees de Jager, the Dutch finance minister, called the increase “inconceivable”.

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Valérie Pécresse, France’s budget minister, said: “For us, it is simply impossible, unjustifiable and unacceptable that the EU demands of each of its members efforts to reduce deficits, to cut spending, and at the same time, it proposes an increase of 7% for its own budget.”

Michael Link, a state secretary in Germany’s foreign ministry in charge of the budget negotiations, said that it was hard to understand that the Commission continued asking for more money in its budget while member states were asked to make cuts.