EU budget talks collapse
Three member states reject MEPs’ demands to be given a greater say over future negotiations.
Talks on the European Union’s 2011 budget have collapsed, with the Council of Ministers and the European Parliament unable to reach agreement on the role of MEPs in future negotiations.
Talks continued into the early hours of this morning (16 November) but three member states, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Sweden, rejected MEPs’ demands to be given a greater say in future negotiations on the EU’s multi-annual spending programme.
Failure to reach agreement means that the 2011 budget will be frozen at 2010 levels. The Commission has warned that this will have serious implications for a wide range of EU policies including regional aid, farm support and funding for the EU’s new diplomatic corps, the European External Action Service (EEAS).
“We wanted a deal, but I regret that a few member states closed the door to the 2011 budget agreement,” said Jerzy Buzek, president of the European Parliament, who led the Parliament’s negotiating team.
“We used every last minute available to us but unfortunately it was not possible to reconcile the positions,” said Melchior Wathelet, Belgium’s state secretary for the budget, who led the Council’s negotiating delegation. He said that while both sides agreed on a 2.9% increase for next year’s budget, the three member states could not accept a political declaration that would have increased the role of MEPs in talks on future spending, including finding new income for the EU budget.
The three countries also rejected using a so-called flexibility mechanism that would temporarily increase funds available to the EU in the years 2011-13. MEPs had demanded the use of the mechanism, which would add some €4 billion to the annual budget to help pay for projects such as ITER, the international experimental nuclear fusion reactor in southern France.
New proposal
Janusz Lewandowski, the European commissioner for financial programming and budget, said he “deeply regretted the fiasco” and said the European Commission would draft a new budget proposal.
The process of reaching a budgetary deal now has to start all over again. Under budgetary procedures introduced by the Lisbon treaty, the two sides have 21 days to reach a deal after talks began. Yesterday’s meeting was the last chance to secure a deal.
Lewandowski refused to put an exact date on when he would present a new proposal, but both he and MEPs said it was unlikely that a new budget agreement could be reached before the end of the year. Parliament and Council officials said they did not expect a new proposal for several weeks.
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As a result, the EU will enter 2011 with spending frozen at 2010 levels, using a rolling, month-by-month budget until a new budget deal is reached.
Dutch and British officials said the Parliament’s demands for a say in discussions on finding new revenue for the EU budget, or an observer role in negotiations on a new spending programme, were unacceptable. “We did not feel that we should give powers to the European Parliament that they did not have to begin with,” said Ben Knapen, the Dutch minister for European affairs.
Diplomats said the budget deadlock was likely to be raised by EU leaders at their next European Council, in December.