Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-09-05-Speech-3-266"
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"For all those reasons, the Council has maintained the preliminary draft budget submitted by the Commission for the international fisheries agreement, and has asked the Commission only to earmark these appropriations for other fisheries agreements. I would take this opportunity to remind you of the fact that the appropriations for the international fisheries agreements, in accordance with the Interinstitutional Agreement, come under compulsory expenditure, irrespective of where that is: on the budget heading, in reserve or on a BA budget heading.
In addition, as already mentioned, the Council has maintained the appropriations for international fisheries agreements in their entirety. Finally, I regret that during the consultation meeting of 20 July, no agreement was reached concerning the amount of appropriations that need to be earmarked for the common foreign and security policy. That is why the Council has adopted in its draft budget the amounts which the Commission had proposed in its preliminary draft. I must confess that I do not entirely understand the requests to reduce the amounts to be allocated to common foreign and security policy. You will agree with me that these amounts, which are already lower than in 2001, are very modest and are really the minimum required to ensure that Europe can play a prominent role on the world stage, especially in those regions which are being plagued by the crises with which we are all familiar. The wish to reduce those amounts could, more than anything, affect the European Union’s credibility, and I do not believe that that was your intention.
I therefore hope that it will become apparent as the budgetary procedure further unfolds, and especially from the outcome of your first reading, that you have been open to my reasoning, which is the Council’s reasoning, and that you will reach the same conclusion as I have with regard to the justification of the amounts proposed in the Commission’s preliminary draft budget. As you can see, the Council has attempted to allocate adequate resources to the different priorities concerning the EU’s external action.
Nevertheless, the Council has added a margin of EUR 100 million under the maximum of category 4 of the financial perspectives, which will enable you to confirm your priorities in this sector. When the Council compiled its draft budget for administrative expenditure which falls within the scope of category 5 of the financial perspectives, as already stated, it followed an approach which aims to meet the needs of the institution as far as possible, taking into account their specific features.
With regard to the Commission’s staffing requests, the Council continues to support the reforms and voted in favour of 78 new posts at first reading. As for the other 239 posts, the Council had not adopted a position on this matter on 20 July. I would like to do this in light of the decision on the Regulation on the final termination of service by Commission officials.
The draft budget provides for a margin of EUR 53 million under the maximum of category 5 of the financial perspectives. This is to enable accommodation of fresh needs in the field of administrative expenditure, and the European data protection monitor, in particular.
I should like to finish the overview of the different expenditure categories with the expenditure on pre-accession aid. The Council has, in this respect, maintained the amount that the Commission had earmarked in its preliminary draft budget for commitment appropriations. As for payment appropriations, a sharp increase by 20.9% compared to last year is provided for, following an adjustment in the form of a reduction by EUR 380 million of the amount which the Commission had included in the preliminary draft. This increase reflects the priority which the Council, backed by the European Parliament and the Commission, affords this expenditure.
I would not wish to close off this presentation of the draft budget, compiled by the Council on 20 July last, without underlining my intention to bring this budgetary procedure to a successful conclusion and, like last year, to reach agreement at the consultation which precedes the Council in November. It is, therefore, my wish that the budgetary talks be continued in the same spirit, so that for the budget year 2002, a budget of European Communities can be set up which affords us the means to meet the priorities and challenges which the European Union is set to face shortly.
I would like to finish off by thanking the two rapporteurs, Mr Costa Neves and Mrs Buitenweg, for their positive contributions.
I do not intend to give a complete outline of the draft budget. That can be found in the exhaustive explanation which has been sent to you. What I would like to do is to go into more detail, that is to say per category of expenditure, of what the Council has laid down in its draft budget for 2002.
Concerning category 1 of the financial perspectives for agricultural expenditure, the draft budget has taken into consideration the implications of the decisions taken by the European Council of Berlin in March 1999 concerning the reorganisation of the common agricultural policy. Despite this, with regard to sub-category 1A of the financial perspectives, which covers the common agricultural policy, the Council has specified amounts which are generally EUR 200 million lower than the amounts which the Commission had proposed in its preliminary draft budget. This reduction does not provide for the discussion of the letter of amendments, which the Interinstitutional Agreement prescribes, and which requests that particular account be taken of the development of the markets and the state of negotiations on the different common market organisations. This reduction is mainly linear and particularly discounts the budget headings pertaining to the effects of BSE and foot and mouth, as well as the headings pertaining to the common market organisations, which form the subject of current negotiations.
Moreover, as I explained a moment ago, the Council failed to adopt the principle of a reserve of EUR one billion, which the Commission had proposed in order to cover the effects of the BSE and FMD crises, and increase the margin in the process. The Council prefers to wait for the letter of amendments which is due this autumn.
At first reading by the Council, this leads to an increase in expenditure of the common agricultural policy by 2.3% compared to 2001. With regard to expenditure for agricultural development, the Council has adopted the proposed appropriations of the preliminary draft budget and has, consequently, incorporated the entire sub-category 1B of the financial perspectives.
The Council has included in the budget the whole of category 2 of the financial perspectives, which is dedicated to structural measures, as commitment appropriations, in line with the conclusions reached by the European Council of Berlin in March 1999. In addition, the Council has accepted nearly all payment appropriations from the preliminary draft budget and only reduced the Community initiative programmes by EUR 375 million, in view of the expected delay in the implementation thereof.
In respect of category 3 of the financial perspectives, which is dedicated to the financing of internal policy, the Council is committed to funding the multi-annual programmes in an appropriate manner. That is why it has accepted the amounts which the Commission had requested in its preliminary draft budget, especially for the framework programme for research and development of the trans-European networks. However, based on the anticipated price development, the Council has curtailed the commitment and payment appropriations, which are not accompanied by multi-annual programmes, together with appropriations for agencies. In the context of this category, I should like to point out that at first reading, the Council increased appropriations in its draft budget, namely on the budget headings which were intended for this purpose in the Commission’s preliminary draft budget, in order to launch Eurojust and the SIS2 system for Schengen.
As you can see, the Council has ensured that its draft budget adequately covers the priorities within the internal policy of category 3 of the financial perspectives. Consequently, the Council has created a precautionary margin of EUR 110 million, which is more generous than the margin provided for in the Commission’s preliminary draft budget. This margin should be sufficient to cover your priorities, a number of which were listed by your rapporteur, including
learning and immigration.
I should now like to turn to the financing of the EU’s external action, included in category 4 of the financial perspectives. The Council has, to a very large extent, followed the Commission’s preliminary draft budget. Indeed, the Council has maintained major appropriations and carried out only minor reductions to the commitment and payment appropriations, geographically divided across a limited number of budget headings."@en1
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