Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-10-23-Speech-2-146"
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"en.20011023.7.2-146"2
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"I would now like to turn my attention to the funding of the EU’s external measures, as included in heading 4 of the financial perspectives. The Council has largely followed the Commission’s preliminary draft budget. The Council has also made an effort to allocate resources to the different priorities in the field of external measures. For example, the Council has created a margin of EUR 100 million under the ceiling of heading 4 of the financial perspectives, which should enable us to shore up the priorities in this sector.
With regard to this heading 4 of the financial perspectives, I should nevertheless like to point out one particular aspect pertaining to the appropriations for the common foreign and security policy. I very much regret the fact that, during the conciliation meeting of 20 July involving the European Parliament and the Council, an agreement was still not reached with regard to the level of appropriations to be included. That is why the Council has adopted the amounts in its draft budget which the Commission proposed in its preliminary draft. I have to confess that I do not fully grasp why requests for a reduction in these amounts were made. You will agree with me that these amounts, which are already lower than in 2001, are very modest as they are and are really the bare minimum to ensure that Europe can play a prominent role on the world stage. The wish to reduce these amounts at such a crucial time as in the current international crisis could particularly harm the EU’s credibility. I do not believe that that is what is intended.
I should now like to move on to the administrative expenditure of the institutions. When the Council compiled the draft budget, it was motivated by the wish to meet the needs of the institutions as much as possible, taking into account their specific characteristics. In the draft budget, there is a surplus left over to the tune of EUR 53 million under the ceiling of heading 5 of the financial perspectives, which allows new needs in the field of administrative expenditure, notably for the budget of the European data protection supervisor, to be accommodated. In this connection, the Council recently sent you its letter of amendment No 1 for 2002.
Despite this, I am of the opinion that each of the institutions represented here are acutely aware of the pressure which the ceilings of heading 5 are under. A first step in this connection was the agreement that was reached during the conciliation meeting of 20 July involving the European Parliament and the Council concerning a request to the Secretaries-General of the institutions to compile a report for the benefit of the budgetary authority by the time the Budgetary Council is held in November. This report should comprise a multi-annual analysis of heading 5, as well as proposals concerning necessary economy measures to prevent the maximum allocated to this heading being exceeded, also in the framework of enlargement. In the light of this report, the follow-up action that needs to be taken should subsequently be determined. I should already like to underline that a number of suggestions made a moment ago in connection with the report are certainly worth looking at further.
I should also like to mention another aspect concerning administrative expenditure, notably the Commission’s staffing requests. The Council continues to support the reforms on which the Commission is working, and agreed at first reading to the creation of 78 new offices requested by the external delegations in the framework of decentralisation. With regard to the other 239 offices, the Council failed to adopt a position on 20 July because, on the one hand, it requires more clarity concerning the decision on the regulation for the definitive termination of service by Commission officials and, on the other hand, it nurses the hope that your discussions on this matter will yield a solution which can accommodate our respective wishes.
I should like to finish this list of the different points which will be occupying our minds for the next couple of weeks by returning to a question with which you are all too familiar, namely the extent of payment appropriations. First of all, I am delighted that the European Parliament and the Commission share the Council’s concern as to the commitments outstanding (in our Community jargon also known as the ‘RAL’). The progress report of 30 June 2001, requested by the Commission in the framework of the previous budgetary procedure, is certainly useful in this connection. However, I should like to point out that the vast increase in payment appropriations is not a cure-all for RAL absorption. This is evident from the extent of the balances over the past budget years which were repaid to the Member States. On the one hand, there will still be commitments outstanding as a logical extension of the split appropriations, while, on the other hand, the improved follow-up of the commitment appropriations, notably by an opt-out policy, is also an effective means of absorbing potentially abnormal RALs.
As to the extent of payment appropriations in the draft budget, the Council has expressed a preference for limited and controlled growth. Indeed, the Council is striving to include payment appropriations which correspond to the actual implementation options. In this way, we prevent the individual European taxpayers from being faced with too heavy a burden.
I have given you a brief outline of the points which will undoubtedly be the topic of discussion over the next couple of weeks. The seriousness with which the Commission and the two arms of the budgetary authority are treating the start of this new budgetary procedure is obvious to me, and a source of real pleasure to me. It is my wish for the budgetary discussions, after you have cast your votes in a couple of days, to be continued in the same spirit and, if possible, for agreement to be reached as early as November about a budget of the European Communities for the 2002 budget year which will provide us with the resources to meet the priorities and challenges which the European Union will be facing shortly."@en1
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