EU budget: MEPs to trade cash for power

Increased spending ‘flexibility’ and a greater say for MEPs are set to be key factors in the final shape of an EU budget deal for 2007 to 2013, the European commission said on Tuesday.

European budget commissioner Dalia Grybauskaite is lending the EU executive’s support to MEP demands, following a parliament vote on January 18.

“We support the political will of the European parliament, even if it is not possible to raise the budget ceiling, to go for more flexibility in the budget, and for more involvement of MEPs,” she said.

Grybauskaite is critical of the ‘financial perspective’ agreed, amid acrimony, in the early hours of the morning at a Brussels summit.

“The proposals have weaknesses and technical errors,” she said. “We are not fighting now the political decision but saying how technically it is messing everything up and how difficult it is to implement it.”

MEPs have budget veto

Parliament must back the seven-year EU financing package for spending to cleared and last week MEPs rejected proposals agreed by Europe’s leaders on December 17.

Euro deputies are unhappy with spending cuts driven by penny-pinching national capitals, the absence of detailed emergency funds and no parliament involvement in a budget review set for 2008.

EU officials are not confident that Europe’s leaders are prepared to put significant extra cash in the Brussels pot, reopening talks on a tricky and delicate deal cut in marathon talks last month.

Sources involved in negotiations between the parliament, commission and Austrian EU presidency suggest that MEPs will be “going for power rather money”.

Trade-offs

The sources also note “internal politics” is playing a role in the parliament, with divisions between MEPs from new and old EU member states.

“Experienced” MEPs from the EU15 are taking the pragmatic line of seeking an enlarged spending role for parliament in the unlikely event of getting extra funds.

But deputies from new member states, those countries that pay most of the price for spending cuts to EU ‘cohesion’ funds, may hold out for extra expenditure.

‘Disaster’

The parliament’s lead negotiator, the German centre-right MEP Reimer Boege, insists the EU assembly is holding out for increased expenditure.

“Rural development is a disaster, more than cohesion, foreign affairs spending is badly damaged and we are negotiating for increases to headings,” he told EUpolitix.

“The key issues are: we should have more growth on figures, flexibility and revision… I am not giving figures. Giving numbers would mean the end of negotiations.”

Grybauskaite shares parliament’s concerns over deep cuts to expenditure and “leftovers” for education, transport infrastructure.

She also believes changes to rural development finding are unworkable and is concerned that health protection budgets are “practically cut” at a time of emerging threats such as avian flu.

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