By Bruno Waterfield - 17th December 2004
National governments are seeking to slash future EU budgets by €210 billion, Josep Borrell has warned.
Six penny-pinching EU capitals are seeking to cut European Commission expenditure projections for 2007 to 2013 from €1025bn to €815bn.
But the European Parliament president has reminded EU leaders at a Brussels summit that future spending plans, the ‘financial perspectives’, must be backed by MEPs.
“Parliament takes its central role in the financial perspective process extremely seriously,” he said.
“We want agreement… but we do not want just any agreement. And without parliament, there can be no financial perspective.”
The EU’s paymasters, Britain, France, Germany, Austria, Sweden, and the Netherlands, are seeking to cut their dues.
“Will this figure [€815bn] mean that we will be obliged to scale down our political objectives and unravel the undertakings entered into?,” asked Borrell.
“I cannot see how [EU leaders] can reduce the financial allocation and at the same time face up to the new challenges and priorities awaiting the union.”
Borrell argues that cuts to spending in the period 2007 to 2013 will set back European enlargement, including progress in the ten new EU members that joined in May 2004, damage growth and hit Europe’s poorest areas.
And the parliament chief noted that some capitals, especially Berlin and London, which are most keen on future enlargement are also leading calls for cuts.
“Allow me to say that it is strange to see that the member states that are in favour of further enlargement - and here I am thinking in particular of Turkey - are also those that are the least in favour of adequate funding,” he said.
EU sources suggest that the main battleground will be regional aid to Europe’s poorest areas.
Commission proposals set spending at €336bn but the EU’s main cash contributors are pushing hard for funding to focused on the ten new, mainly East European, countries.
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