New momentum in budget talks
Focus shifts to specific areas of diagreement.
Negotiations between the European Union’s institutions on the EU’s budget for 2014-20 turned for the first time this week to the substantive areas of disagreement.
Up to now, the talks between the European Parliament, the Council of Ministers, represented by Ireland, and the European Commission have been largely procedural. But Eamon Gilmore, Ireland’s deputy prime minister, who chaired three and a half hours of negotiations on Tuesday (28 May), said that there had been “new momentum” in the talks. “We made real progress,” he said.
Officials described the atmosphere as “constructive”.
“Differences of views remain but I can also see the scope for agreement,” Gilmore said. “I remain convinced that we can reach an agreement over the coming weeks.”
The negotiators have set themselves a deadline of the end of June for reaching an agreement.
Ireland and the MEPs asked Janusz Lewandowski, the European commissioner for financial programming and budget, to draft compromise texts on four elements of the €960 billion multi-annual financial framework for 2014-20 that are at the heart of the negotiations. The four areas of disagreement are the flexibility of the EU budget, a revision clause, the future of the EU’s own resources, and the unity of the EU budget.
Concessions
In all these areas, the MEPs had demanded concessions when in March they rejected a deal struck between the national governments at February’s meeting of the European Council.
The Council and the MEPs asked Lewandowski to produce the compromise texts in time for the next round of political negotiations, which is scheduled to take place next Tuesday (4 June). Technical meetings to propose Tuesday’s talks are scheduled for today (30 May). The Parliament’s budget committee will discuss the state of the negotiations today.
An official said that the meeting produced “the best we could hope for”. “Now we are past the stage when you are asking yourself whether you are negotiating or not,” the official said. “Now we are down to business.”
MEPs are also linking their backing for the long-term budget to member states’ agreement to meet shortfalls in the annual budgets, whether carried over from last year or emerging in 2013. Lewandowski at the end of March asked for €11.2bn in additional contributions from the member states to finance the deficit; the member states earlier this month agreed in principle to pay €7.3bn up front and come back to the remainder later this year.
Lewandowski has delayed submitting a draft annual budget for 2014 – the first of the next multi-annual cycle – to the college of commissioners. The college was initially scheduled to adopt the draft budget yesterday (29 May). Under the EU’s budget procedure, the draft annual budget has to be presented by the Commission by 1 July.
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