Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-05-16-Speech-2-032"
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"en.20000516.3.2-032"2
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"C
Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, in February, the Commission debated the priorities for the European budget for next year and had the opportunity to discuss these priorities in detail with the European Parliament both here in plenary and, more importantly, in the Committee on Budgets and in the various trialogues between the Commission, the European Parliament and the Council which have taken place since. The Commission has used this debate as the basis for its preliminary draft budget for 2001, which it now has pleasure in presenting to you, as adopted by the Commission.
I should briefly like to point out that the Commission proposal includes a proposal for a letter of amendment on the Budget 2000.
More importantly, it also includes a whole series of technical adjustments and, in particular, the consequences of the annual accounts for 1999 for the European Union budget. The European Union budget for 1999 closed with a large surplus of EUR 3.2 billion. In other words, EUR 3.2 billion will be refunded to the Member States. These refunds will be offset against the contributions for this year. Of course, all Member States will be included and the money will be refunded in the ratio to which the Member States finance the European Union budget. There was some confusion in relation to Great Britain in the report.
I should point out that the refund was offset but a different figure was obtained because of the rate of the euro to the pound. Great Britain’s contribution in euros appears to be higher than in the plan, but if the calculation is carried out in pounds, it appears to be different. So we need to take a good look at the question of exchange rates in the European budget.
I have highlighted this balance in order to illustrate – and this very point was raised in your debate on the European Parliament budget – that the term budgetary rigour is certainly not a concept which is foreign to the European budget and it is being applied.
The next step is for the Council to examine the Commission’s preliminary draft budget and to draw up a draft budget for the year 2001. Of course this will be followed by intensive debate. I trust that the rest of the procedure will be marked by less harping on about principles and more joint endeavour to use the funds in the European budget efficiently and for the benefit and in support of the objectives of the European Union.
As it is the first preliminary draft budget which I have presented, allow me to comment on the procedure and the timing. I think it makes a great deal of sense to debate priorities intensively first, before getting down to specific numbers. More importantly, I think it is most helpful to present the preliminary draft budget so early, thereby allowing time for intensive discussion.
Now to the budget proper: as with every national budget, most of the figures in the European budget for a given year are determined by contracts, by previous decisions in past years and by legal bases in past years. This is particularly true of agricultural expenditure in the area of the organisation of the markets, the largest item in the budget, including in the Budget 2001, and of the Structural Funds and multiannual programmes, be they in research, youth measures or foreign policy. Despite the fact that figures are determined by previous years, the Budget 2001 also sets clear political priorities and, following discussions over recent months, I think I can say that the priorities in the Commission’s preliminary draft budget tally to a large extent with Parliament’s priorities. Take, for example, the priority under the second pillar of agricultural policy; the highest rate of increase in the Commission’s preliminary draft budget is for promoting the development of rural areas and I think that this in fact highlights that the Commission considers that we need to focus on the second pillar of agricultural policy.
Secondly, economic policy prioritises the need to develop and promote Europe as a knowledge-based society, which is why the Commission’s preliminary draft budget has set a very large plus against research and a new edition of the programme to promote small- and medium-sized enterprises and, more importantly, contains a proposal to combine them with the promotion of technology, which was also a matter of concern to the rapporteur, Mrs Haug. Access to new technologies is not very well developed in small- and medium-sized enterprises. Of course, with the economic structure which we would like to have and which is strongly supported by small- and medium-sized enterprises, and which we want to use to push Europe forward, it is necessary and it makes sense for Europe’s development in information and communications technologies to combine these two aspects.
The preliminary draft budget also contains a new focus on foreign policy. We have already had the opportunity to debate this in great detail, especially assistance in the Balkans. Another priority which I should like to mention is the need for budgetary rigour in the European budget and the Commission’s preliminary draft budget is in line with this objective. So now a few figures on the overall budget. Without agricultural expenditure, the preliminary draft budget makes provision for an increase in commitment appropriations, i.e. the financial commitments which can be entered into, of 1% in comparison with last year. I think that this figure clearly illustrates that the preliminary draft budget is in keeping with the overall policy of budgetary rigour, and that the rate of increase in payments as a whole, without agricultural expenditure, is 3%. I should point out that the average growth forecast for the budgets of the Member States is 3.1%. I stress this because it will certainly play an important part during the debate with the Council. However, we have included a considerable increase in agricultural expenditure in the preliminary draft budget, namely 7.6% or, in absolute terms, a total of EUR 3.12 billion. This is mainly as a result of the resolutions passed by the Heads of State and Government at the Berlin Summit last year and these agreed financial perspectives form part of the interinstitutional agreement concluded last year between the Parliament, the Council and the Commission. I should point out that this figure for agricultural policy actually makes provision for the draft budget for agricultural policy to remain under the ceiling decided in Berlin because the Commission proposal includes shifting EUR 300 million from the agricultural budget to foreign policy, yet still there is such a high rate of growth for agricultural policy.
To sum up, the preliminary draft figures as a whole make provision overall for a rate of increase of 3.9% in commitment appropriations and 5% in payments. The rate of growth of payments is higher because we have a large backlog of payment commitments and the Commission currently takes the view that this should not get any bigger; on the contrary it should be reduced, which is precisely why the rate of growth for payments needs to be higher.
What does this mean for the European state quota? By that I mean what proportion of the total gross national product of the European Community is absorbed by the European Union budget? In other words, how high is the European state quota based on the strong growth in gross national product expected in the countries of the European Community next year? There are very positive growth prospects here. Is the change in the ratio of gross national product to budget from 1.11% in the year 2000 to 1.07% in the year 2001 a step backwards? I highlight this – we also have extremely intensive debates in the Member States on state quotas, which are between 40 and 50% – in order to illustrate the fact that the European budget accounts for 1.07% of the total gross national product. This clearly illustrates that the budget of the European Union is worth its weight in gold.
The European Union acquired a new remit following the war in Kosovo and the resolutions on the Stability Pact in the Balkans. The Council stressed the importance of this remit once again in Lisbon. Now we have to provide the funds and so the Commission has presented a proposal in its preliminary draft budget which reflects the importance of this remit. EUR 815 million have been earmarked for aid to the western Balkans in 2001, following on from EUR 540 million this year. This is the aid which has been earmarked in order to reconstruct the civil society, i.e. it does not, for example, include expenditure by Member States for KFOR troops. Is expenditure of EUR 815 million for the entire region too high an estimate? We have already discussed whether these countries are able to absorb this figure in the trialogue debate with the Council. I think that, to an extent, this debate is somewhat cynical because requirements are, of course, extremely high. But of course the political decision as to how much aid the budgetary authority wishes to provide from the European budget rests with the budgetary authority alone. I should point out that the proposal for Serbia for the year 2001 makes provision for a fixed sum of 40 million. The Commission has proposed that, if the political situation changes in Serbia, additional funds will be provided from the flexibility reserve. But I should like to stress once again that the Commission has made provision for a very large sum for Serbia in its proposed amendment to the financial plan for the period up to 2006, and I think that we should send a signal to Serbia, to the political opposition in Serbia, that the European Union is prepared to come up with large sums of aid if and when political democracy becomes a reality.
This is the Commission’s first budget in the form of activity-based budgeting; in other words, all budget expenditure has been allocated to political areas. Now we can see at a glance how much is being spent on which political areas. I think that it is an important step in the direction of greater transparency and stronger public political debate to stop talking in categories, because apart from us here in this House and a handful of officials in the Member States and a few well-informed journalists, who knows what internal policies are, for example? I think that ABB, i.e. this proposal, this new structure, will really make public political debate much easier. What is the European Union spending its money on? This is therefore a very important step, not a technical step, but an important political step."@en1
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