2010 budget conciliation: funding of economic recovery plan solved

"We reached an acceptable level of payments, although it could be bigger if the Member States were better on spending cohesion and structural funds", said EP rapporteur László Surján (EPP, HU) adding that there would be room to increase payments by €3 billion, if only Member States used the funds as they should.

The Council's first proposal was €120.5 billion and Parliament's first reading one was €127.5 billion, both in payments.

The commitment appropriations agreed yesterday will be roughly €141 billion.

In a joint statement, Parliament, Council and the Commission urged the Member states to rethink the way they use the cohesion and structural fund programmes, so that EU money could "facilitate overcoming the effects of the economic crisis"  and in particular "support growth and competitiveness and limit job losses."

Funding for the EU economic recovery plan

The main problem to be solved during this year's budget procedure was how to fund the EU economic recovery plan: €2.4 billion (in commitments) next year. The share earmarked for rolling out rural broadband infrastructure (€420 million), had already been solved.

After Parliament's first reading and the Commission's amending letter, everything but €258 million had been covered, mainly with unspent money from heading 2 (agriculture, fisheries, environment etc.) in 2009 and margins and leftovers from heading 2 and heading 5 (administration) in 2009 and 2010.

Together with the newly-proposed support for the closure of the Bulgarian nuclear plant Kozloduy (€75 million), and €5.5 million for Parliament's pilot projects and preparatory actions - the total a gap to be plugged yesterday was €338.5 million.

€195 million in fresh money

Parliament argued that most of this should be funded by fresh money from the Member States, since the economic recovery plan was new, i.e. not included in the 2007-2013 financial perspectives, and since the closure of the Kozloduy plant had been added at the very last minute.

After 10 hours of negotiations, the institutions agreed to the following funding:

- €195 million in fresh money, from the so-called "flexibility instrument",

- €81 million reduction in increases requested by Parliament at the first reading in Heading 1a (competitiveness for growth and employment),

- €53.5 from the margins in heading 2 (preservation and management of natural resources) and unused money from the Council's, Committee of Regions' and the Economic and Social committee's administrative budgets 2009, and

- € 9 million in unused money at various other budget lines.

Milk price crisis

The Council also agreed to allocate a total of  €300 million to emergency measures for milk producers, by reshuffling an additional €20 million from other agriculture lines. This aid to the dairy sector, which Parliament had been demanding for years, was finally accepted by the Commission and Council in the 2010 budget procedure.

"This is the spirit of Lisbon, when Parliament will not only ask but also decide on agriculture issues. We achieved what we wanted", said Mr Surján.

The Council held its second reading of the budget yesterday, after the conciliation meeting. Parliament will adopt the final budget during the December plenary.