MEPs and member states clinch €4 billion budget deal
ANDREW RETTMAN
05.04.2006 @ 07:35 CET
EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - Member states and MEPs clinched a €4 billion deal on the EU's 2007-2013 budget shortly before midnight on Tuesday (4 April) in Strasbourg.
Member states gave €2 billion of "new money" on top of the €862.4 billion agreed in December, while another €2 billion was shuffled around within the accounts system to raise funds for MEP-favoured policies.
MEPs got €4 billion extra for their favoured policies (Photo: European Commission)
The €2 billion gained in the shuffle consists of €1.5 billion from moving emergency aid funding outside the formal budget structure and a €500 million reform of the EU institutions' pensions fund, officials indicated.
The €4 billion net gain for MEPs will be channelled into common foreign and security policy spending, the Erasmus student exchange scheme, research, small businesses and the Trans-European Networks infrastructure programme.
The Austrian presidency also made a declaration that member states should take more responsibility on how they spend EU funds "with a view to getting a positive statement of assurance [from the Court of Auditors]."
The Court of Auditors gave a negative statement of assurance on EU spending for the 11th time in a row last year.
But MEPs lost the battle to increase the size of the flexibility instrument, a €200 million a year disaster relief fund, or to soften the decision-making procedure on flexibility instrument payouts.
"It is perhaps a smallish budget," Austrian chancellor Wolfgang Schussel said on Wednesday morning.
"Let us think for a moment of the climate we would have had in Europe if we had not reached an agreement," European Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso indicated.
€12 billion gambit
A parliament official said the MEPs' original demand of €12 billion extra was just a gambit.
"In the end we had to face reality and accept the offer of €4 billion," he indicated, warning that some MEPs on the budget committee are likely to complain about the compromise.
The presidency declaration on greater spending responsibility is also just "a first step rather than an iron-clad rule" the contact explained.
But parliament presdient Josep Borrell stated there would be "sufficient support" in parliament for MEPs to rubber stamp the new deal.
Tuesday's behind-closed-doors meeting lasted for seven and a half hours, an EU diplomat said.
But Austrian finance minister Karl-Heinz Grasser, budgets commissioner Dalia Grybauskaite and the four MEP negotiators all came out with "smiles on their faces."
The deal means cheques for 2007 EU projects will be sent on time.
It also puts a full stop on a budget story which began with a punch up between member states at the Luxembourg presidency's June 2005 summit.