Germans worry over financing EU foreign operations
LISBETH KIRK
29.10.2003 @ 09:28 CET
The European Union has ambitions to play a bigger role on the world scene, but where is the money to back such involvement to come from?
A German strategy paper seen by the Financial Times Deutschland highlights this problem and warns that financing European Union foreign and security operations could very well become problematic.
The paper analyses areas for possible EU action and warns the cost of running these operations could soon exceed the financial capacity of the European Commission and strain the budgets of the member states, according to the Financial Times Deutschland.
"Possible police missions in Iraq and Congo" could give the problem "a much wider dimension", the German strategy paper noted.
In 2004, the budget for common EU foreign and security policy is only 52.6 million euro. A number of common operations are financed directly by the participating member states, of which Germany can be expected to contribute a considerable amount due to its size.
Iraq donations
German foreign minister Joschka Fischer has said that a German contribution to the rebuilding of Iraq was not possible due to German budgetary problems.
At the donor conference in Madrid, Brussels gave 200 million euro from the Community budget. Some MEPs, who have the final say over the European budget, wanted to give more money. However, they were unable go against the wishes of the member states.
On top of this, individual member states pledged an extra 500 million euro – most of which came from the UK.
Some of the most influential MEPs are pushing for a greater European Parliament say in EU missions and over the whole of the EU budget – via the new EU Constitution.
Elmar Brok, German Christian Democrat MEP and chairman of the European Parliament Committee on Foreign Affairs, Security and Defence spoke in Financial Times Deutschland of a "cartel of finance ministers" and demanded European Parliament involvement in all spending.
