The European Parliament,

-  having regard to the Treaty establishing the European Community, and in particular Article 272 thereof, and the Treaty establishing the European Atomic Energy Community, and in particular Article 173 thereof,

-  having regard to Council Decision 94/728/EC, Euratom of 31 October 1994 on the European Communities' system of own resources(1) ,

-  having regard to Council Decision 2000/597/EC, Euratom of 29 September 2000 on the system of the European Communities' own resources(2) ,

-  having regard to the general budget of the European Union for the 2001 financial year, finally adopted on 14 December 2000(3) ,

-  having regard to its resolutions of 21 April 1994 on a new system of own resources for the European Union(4) and 22 November 1990 on the future financing of the European Community(5) ,

-  having regard to its resolution of 11 March 1999 on the need to modify and reform the European Union's own resources system(6) ,

-  having regard to its position of 17 November 1999(7) on the proposal for a Council decision on the system of the European Union's own resources (COM(1999) 333 - C5-0092/1999 - 1999/0139 (CNS) )(8) ,

-  having regard to the document entitled 'Financing the European Union - Commission Report on the Operation of the Own Resources System' (COM(1998) 560 - C4-0579/1998 ),

-  having regard to Rule 163 of its Rules of Procedure,

-  having regard to the report of the Committee on Budgets (A5-0238/2001 ),

A.  whereas the new Decision 2000/597/EC, Euratom will replace Decision 94/728/EC, Euratom after ratification in the Member States, coming into force on 1 January 2002,

B.  whereas appropriations for payments of EUR 92.569 billion were entered in the 2001 budget, of which EUR 90.972 billion has to be raised from own resources,

C.  whereas own resources are made up of traditional own resources (TOR), the resource accruing from value-added tax (VAT resource) and the GNP, or fourth resource (the application of a rate to the sum of the Member States" GNP), as laid down in Decision 94/728/EC,

D.  whereas, in the 2001 budget, the GNP resource accounts for the largest share of total Community own resources (47.54%), with the VAT resource accounting for 36.79% and TOR for 15.67%,

E.  whereas customs duties account for by far the largest share of TOR (86.62%), the remainder being derived from agricultural duties and levies, and sugar and isoglucose levies,

F.  whereas the own resources share accounted for by TOR has decreased from 29.1% in the 1988 budget to 15.7% in the 2001 budget, the share accounted for by the VAT resource has fallen from 60% to 36.8%, and the GNP resource has become the most important own resource, increasing from 10.9% to 47.5%,

G.  whereas an estimated EUR 1.597 billion, or 1.73% of the initial 2001 budget, is covered by revenue paid not by the Member States, but directly into the EU budget, representing 0.019% of the Member States" GNP; whereas more than half of this non-own-resources revenue stems from the surplus available from the 2000 budget (EUR 900 million), the other sources being miscellaneous Community taxes, levies and dues (EUR 562.3 million), revenue accruing from the administrative operation of the institutions (EUR 62.0 million), contributions to Community programmes, repayment of expenditure etc. (EUR 45.6 million), borrowing and lending operations (EUR 22.3 million) and miscellaneous revenue (EUR 5.1 million),

H.  whereas the Commission has presented the third report on the operation of the inspection arrangements for traditional own resources (1997-1999) (COM(2001) 32 ), which describes the inspections carried out by the Commission,

I.  whereas the Commission has discovered a considerable number of anomalies, irregularities and instances of fraud; whereas Community claims were submitted for the recovery of unduly unpaid amounts and for late-payment interest, as a result of which, in 1997 to 1999, additional entitlements of EUR 3.04 million and EUR 6.97 million in late-payment interest were paid into Community accounts,

J.  whereas for 1998 customs duties and the EU share of VAT lost to the EU budget through cigarette smuggling are put at EUR 118 million, and the total loss to the EU budget and all Member States" budgets (tax losses) is put at between EUR 1 and 5 billion per year,

K.  whereas the Commission filed a civil action against Philip Morris and RJ Reynolds (Nabisco) before the US District Court of Eastern New York on 3 November 2000 seeking compensation for financial losses the EU has suffered from cigarette smuggling into the Community market and injunctive relief in order to prevent further smuggling,

1.  Takes note of the Commission's estimates of expected 2001 revenues, on which the revenue side of the 2001 budget is based, and urges the Commission to update its estimates for 2001 budget revenues after the 2001 SAB on balances is adopted;

2.  Notes that own resources constitute 98.3% of revenue for the 2001 EU budget, which means that the resources to be collected by the Member States on behalf of the EU and transferred to it are equivalent to 1.06% of their GNP;

3.  Notes that payments under the 2001 EU budget have increased to EUR 93.305 billion (including Supplementary and Amending Budgets 1/2001 and 2/2001), compared to EUR 89.441 billion under the 2000 budget; stresses that this represents 1.09% of the Member States´ GNP in 2001 (January 2001), compared to 1.11% in 2000, confirming the trend for a virtually constant reduction in the share of Community GNP accounted for by the EU budget, which has fallen from 1.20% since 1996;

4.  Recalls that Decision 2000/597/EC, Euratom, which will come into force on 1 January 2002, fails to take into account the position Parliament adopted on 17 November 1999;

5.  Recalls its view that the “EU must move steadily away from dependence on transfers from Member States” and that “in the long term, the own resources system must be modified with a view to achieving financial autonomy”; believes that the purpose of the reform should be to provide the Union with an autonomous source of revenue which is sufficient for its needs and directly linked to the taxpayers;

6.  Takes the view that own resources should be developed in order to be more transparent and visible to citizens;

7.  Notes that the GNP resource share has increased steadily and significantly between 1988 and 2001 while TOR and VAT resource shares have decreased over that period;

8.  Notes that the effect of the new Decision 2000/597/EC, Euratom will be to heighten this trend further, because of an increase from 10% to 25% in the proportion of TOR to be kept by the Member States, by way of collection costs, and because of the reduction in the maximum call-in rate for the VAT resource, which is currently 1% and has been set at 0.75% for 2002 and 2003 and 0.50% from 2004 onwards;

9.  Deplores the fact that the Council has not exploited the opportunity afforded by the adoption of the new Decision to move towards financial autonomy for the European Union and full involvement of Parliament in the budgetary procedure, notably concerning the revenue side;

10.  Welcomes the announcement by the Belgian Government that it will propose launching a debate on defining a new budgetary framework over the medium term, during the Belgian Presidency, which could lead to discussions on the desirability of a European tax;

11.  Recalls that the new Decision replaces the old European System of Accounts from 1979 (ESA 79) by the new system from 1995 (ESA 95) without changing the amount available under the own resources ceiling; stresses that this will lead to an adjustment to the own resources ceiling percentage, probably reducing it from 1.27% to 1.25%, for which Annexes I and II to the Interinstitutional Agreement of 6 May 1999 (financial perspective and financial framework) will have to be adapted; stresses that this unilateral decision by Council was criticised in Parliament´s position of 17 November 1999;

12.  Welcomes the efforts by the Commission and the Court of Auditors to discover anomalies, irregularities and instances of fraud; notes that the Commission carried out 70 inspections during the period 1997-1999, discovering 246 anomalies in the process; insists that the Commission step up efforts to recover a higher volume of costs stemming from anomalies, irregularities and fraud, and finally reduce the scale on which these infringements of rules take place in order to avoid additional costs for the European taxpayer;

13.  Welcomes the Commission's announcement to examine the operational consequences of holding the Member States liable for some of the errors committed by their administrations; invites, however, the Commission to explore all possibilities of including losses to the EU budget because of non-collection of TOR in the Member States payments to the EU budget;

14.  Supports the legal action by the Commission against US tobacco companies for cigarette smuggling, and deplores the fact that not all Member States have become joined to the Commission's suit, which might result in a major loss of taxpayers' money in those Member States;

15.  Instructs its President to forward this resolution to the Council, the Commission, the Court of Justice and the Court of Auditors.

(1) OJ L 293, 12.11.1994, p. 9. (2) OJ L 253, 7.10.2000, p. 42. (3) OJ L 56, 26.2.2001, p. 1. (4) OJ C 128, 9.5.1994, p. 363. (5) OJ C 324, 24.12.1990, p. 243. (6) OJ C 175, 21.6.1999, p. 238. (7) OJ C 189, 7.7.2000, p. 72. (8) OJ C 274 E, 28.9.1999, p. 39.