Forty-five million more for Horizon 2020, the European research and development program whose budget had just been "limited" in favor of the Juncker plan to encourage investment over the next three years. Another 32 to increase the funds allocated to foreign policy, 16 for the Erasmus+ student exchange programme, and finally the remaining "small change" for the banking supervision agencies and Frontex (external border control). But above all, the 4,8 billion euros destined to lighten the very long list of overdue and still unpaid invoices by the European Commission were the keystone which on Monday evening made it possible to unblock in extremis the tough confrontation between the European Parliament and the European Council on amendments to this year's budget and to that for 2015. As regards the latter document, the compromise reached on Monday between the negotiators of the Parliament and those of the Council tells us that the total commitments have been brought to 145,3 billion while that of payments was set at 141,2 billion.
And so, barring completely improbable twists and turns, the EU financial document for the coming year will conclude its bumpy journey next week with the definitive approval by the Strasbourg Assembly at the last plenary session of 2014, scheduled from 15 to 18 December. Passage already preceded yesterday by the yes of Coreper, the Committee of Permanent Representatives (the ambassadors to the EU of the 28 member states). A yes which will be followed by the vote of the Parliamentary Budget Committee which will hold an extraordinary meeting on Thursday 11 to also express a formal opinion on the agreement before the final vote in plenary next week. This will avoid recourse to the provisional exercise which would have "fixed" the monthly expense within the insurmountable limit of one twelfth of the total for the year that is about to end.
“Parliament's main objective was to reduce the mountain of unpaid bills. It was no longer possible - is the comment of the French Liberal Democrat Jean Arthuis, president of the Budget Committee, who led the delegation of the Strasbourg Assembly in this last confrontation with that of the Council on the expenditure forecasts for 2015 and on the payment of arrears for the current year – continue to defer to the following year, and so on ad infinitum, the balance of invoices towards subjects who had stipulated regular contracts with the European Commission”. An objectively dramatic question especially for creditors, who have seen their debts increase, already weighed down by the effects of a crisis from which Europe is unable to extricate itself; but also for the credibility of the Commission itself in its role as a reliable partner of companies engaged in the implementation of projects co-financed by the EU.
The size of the growing debt of the Commission, unable to pay its creditors as a result of the freezing of funds, was now enormous. In 2010 they amounted to 5 billion, at the beginning of this year they had reached 23,4 billion. "An unsustainable burden for those committed to working for Europe, and in particular small and medium-sized enterprises, local administrations, non-governmental organizations", underlines the Spanish socialist Eider Guardiazàbal Rubial, rapporteur for the 2015 draft budget. he adds: "Even if the 4,8 billion of the agreement reached is a considerable figure, we would have liked more".
And the Belgian Liberal Democrat deputy Gérard Deprez, who led the Parliament delegation in this latest confrontation with that of the Council on the issue of unpaid bills, increases the dose. “For now, that's fine. But now we want to know how the Commission intends to further reduce the backlog by the end of 2016”. In fact, the deputies who negotiated with the Council on behalf of the European Parliament shared Monday evening's agreement on the condition, however, that the Commission presents (immediately, one has to imagine) a project to reduce within two years "to an acceptable level ” the mass of invoices not yet paid.
"With the agreement on the 2015 budget and above all on the amendments to that of the current year - observes Giovanni La Via, member of the Parliamentary Budget Committee, as well as chairman of the Environment, Consumer Protection and Public Health Committee - we managed to overcome the intransigence of some Member States and to secure the funds to pay the bills for the current year. In addition to avoiding a budget deficit and meeting the well-founded protests of an incalculable number of unpaid beneficiaries”.
“At the end of the negotiations between Parliament and the Council, it can be affirmed – in the opinion of our Economy Minister Pier Carlo Padoan – that a sort of squaring of the circle has been achieved thanks to the overcoming of three crucial challenges: the settlement of overdue invoices, the protection of the efforts of the EU Member States for the consolidation of public finances, the implementation of indispensable stimuli to create employment and generate growth for the future".
On the issue of unpaid invoices, the confrontation between the two European institutions to which the 2009 Lisbon Treaty assigned the task of "co-legislating" has been underway for some time. And it has been turning into a veritable tug of war: on the one hand the body that brings together the governments of the 28 member states of the Union, on the other the one where the representatives, elected by direct universal ballot, of half a billion of European citizens. An inevitably tough tug of war especially on issues that have repercussions on European spending (whose budget is equal – it is worth remembering – only one per cent of the gross domestic product of the Twenty-Eight). Even more so in a period of severe economic and financial crisis such as the one that has not yet ended in Europe.
In short, the context is always critical, and threatens to continue to be so. Since the blanket runs the risk of getting ever shorter as long as, faced with growing expenditure, the amount of revenue will remain essentially stable (if not declining due to the reduction in the pool of resources on which the percentages allocated by the Member States must be calculated to the European Union). The key could then be to identify the EU's "own resources": a never-resolved issue whose solution is being worked on by a commission, chaired by Mario Monti, set up more or less a year ago by Martin Schulz, president of the European Parliament. And one hypothesis – supported by some but opposed by others – could be that of instituting a European tax on financial transactions. As can be imagined, this objective is not exactly easy to achieve in a Europe where the process of integration started over half a century ago has stopped halfway through and indeed today is being challenged by a worrying Eurosceptic wave which finds supporters in the governments and in national and European Parliaments and in a non-marginal share of citizens.
