1980 BUDGET PROCEDURE: SECOND COUNCIL DRAFT
by Altiero Spinelli
SUMMARY: There commences now, and concludes on 9 July, the last phase of the European Parliament's battle concerning the 1980 budget and reform of the Community financial policy, culminating with victory for the shortsighted accounting approach adopted by the Governments and the Commission.
"Today's events", says Spinelli at the end of his speech, "should not make us give up but rather should induce us to prepare another strategy, to prepare for a much greater battle then that which we have waged so far".
And in that spirit, Spinelli sent the following letter to his colleagues, attaching to it the speech made to the House on 21 May 1980. "Speeches in European Parliament, 1976-1986", Pier Virgilio Dastoli Editor. (EP, 26 June 1980)
"Dear colleagues,
During the debate on May 21th in Strasbourg, answering to the report of the Council President, Mr. Colombo, I outlined the problem of the responsibilities Parliament has to assume to take the Community out of the present impasse.
As my speech was not heard by the absent colleagues, and at the present moment it's only published in the arc-en-ciel, in its original language, you'll find a copy in one of the languages you know.
In the weeks following this debate the Council found only a difficult compromise on the problems of British contribution, agricultural prices 80181 and draft-budget 1980.
But we can't illude ourselves. Each solution of the Council has a temporary character. Neither the definition of an agricultural policy more balanced than the present one, nor the introduction of a more equitable resource system, nor the development of common structural and conjunctural policies have been affronted.
With present institutions, procedures and competences, the Community is condemned to pass through more and more frequent and paralyzing crises. All this in a moment in which not only economic, but also foreign policy of the Community need to be developed with continuity, plenitude and a larger popular consensus.
In these circumstances, the European Parliament cannot restrain to deplore the inefficiency of other institutions and give opinions about their actions and initiatives.
I am convinced that the European Parliament must:
- have a large and important debate on the institutional crisis of the Community;
- nominate an "ad hoc" working group to prepare a project of the necessary institutional reforms;
- discuss and approve this project, giving it the precise form of a treaty draft that modificates and integrates the present ones;
- propose its ratification by the national parliaments of the Community.
It would not be wise to try to predeterminate now form and content of the compromises that will emerge between the various political and national groups. The European Parliament is, by nature, the right place where these compromises can be sought and found in a European perspective and not in one that would only be the sum of national ones.
If there are colleagues who, like me, are convinced that the reform of the communitarian institutions is too serious a thing to be left in the hands of statesmen and diplomats, I would be glad if they will answer to this letter and participate in meetings where we'll study the best ways to involve the Parliament in this kind of action.
I send this letter to those colleagues, whose groups or group parts are favourable to the democratic European unification.
Waiting for your answer I am
Sincerely Yours,
Altiero Spinelli
Mr President, when we rejected the budget on 13 December 1979 we gave four fundamental reasons for doing so. Firstly, agricultural guarantee expenditure had to be brought under control: there had to be a better balance between the various parts of the budget, between agricultural expenditure and other expenditure, and the Council's proposals did not recognize this need. Secondly, the new policies had to be developed to a much greater extent than the Council was proposing in its draft. Furthermore, loans ought to be entered in the budget. Finally, a clear statement was needed to the effect that the funds destined to help not only the British but also the Italians and the Irish, were not - whatever the Commission might say - expenditure arising from obligations under the Treaty and thus were not to be considered as compulsory expenditure.
Well now, since that time, the Commission and particularly the Council have behaved in such a way that I am almost inclined to ask myself whether by any chance the gentlemen of the Commission and the Council have not been taking lessons in the art of obstruction from our colleague, Mr Pannella. Although the Commission could have presented its new proposal and its new budget within a fortnight, it waited two months to do so. Although the Council could then quite rapidly have stated to what extent it wanted to accommodate Parliament, it waited six months to do so.
After these obstructionist tactics which have got us with our back to the wall and in a situation in which the Community's budget will only be operative for the six months which remain, what is the Council proposing?
Expenditure on support for agricultural prices is increasing by 1 100 million units of account. In percentage terms this expenditure will now account for 74 % of the budget as against 70% in 1978 and 72% in 1979. Is this way they call making some progress, what they call beginning to rebalance the budget?
Of course, a few small concessions have been made. A modest co-responsibility levy has been introduced, although it is not sufficiently high to act as a real brake. And when, during the long conciliation procedure, we asked the Council to join in a commitment to begin to enforce direct measures for greater supervision and a better balance during the course of the 1981 budgetary procedure, the Council refused saying that its own good intentions were enough.
On structural expenditure the Council offered us - and then rejected - 200 million extra. The Council, completely disregarding everything that had been said and said again - is now proposing the same 200 million. It is really 240, but within the Council there was a clear statement, with a recommendation not to tell Parliament (but it is difficult to keep a secret) that the 200 million units of account would remain just that. It was only because of the extraordinary events in Afghanistan, Cambodia and I don't remember what other country that 40 million was added in order to help them. Aid must be given to the Cambodians, the Afghans and so on, but a Community policy on development, no! Such and such an amount must not be exceeded!
As far as the non-compulsory nature of certain expenditure is concerned the Council discovered that it is the Commission that decides what is what in the Community. Since Mr Tugendhat came and told us some untenable things, the Council thinks it is justified in upholding the compulsory nature of expenditure.
Finally, there has been the refusal to include loans in the budget and the previous commitment (which was not kept) to take a decision on this within six months has now been forgotten.
At the heart of all this there is the statement which the Council has made many times, namely that there will be no change in the rate of VAT going to the Community for the next couple of years. This means, that even next year using the forecasts we can already make and which the Commission will perhaps tell us it has already made - we will only be able to remain within the limits by making serious cuts. Woe betide you if you cut compulsory expenditure: this must be maintained as it is or may be increased by a few thousand million as happens every year! The serious cuts will be made to regional policy, social policy, industrial policy and energy policy. This is the progress made by the Council.
Mr Dankert's motion for a resolution says that even if not everything has been achieved, something has been done. The Committee on Budgets moreover rejected by a majority some amendments supported by ourselves and colleagues from the Socialist Group in which we asked that the remarks on the EAGGF item should include a note to the effect that during the procedure for the 1980 budget the Commission ought to propose - and the Council decide on - the measures needed for the reorganization and balance which have been called for.
Although we are able to include this in the remarks as a condition for the execution of this expenditure, the majority on the committee thought that the Council had already done too much for it to be asked to do this too. We shall table this amendment again just as we shall table again an amendment which the Committee on Budgets did not accept in which we repeat that we consider certain expenditure to be non-compulsory. We intend to insert it in that position and not in the resolution because the resolution merely expresses Parliament's opinion. The budget, once adopted, is an act of the Community and it is here that there must be an indication of what is compulsory and what is not. It is possible for us to do this. It is up to us whether we do it or not.
It is for these reasons that we are not inclined to support the Dankert motion for a resolution which would give one to believe that, even if we have not obtained everything we wanted, various important points have been won. We have so far cooperated on drawing up the amendments in the hope that the resolution would be a strongly critical one. We would also have voted in favour of many of the amendments which were not examined in committee, many of the amendments, for example, tabled by the Radical Party which are quite sensible. But since all of this is really a very small addition to something which is practically an endorsement of the Council's draft instead of a condemnation, our intention - unless something new emerges in the course of this debate - is to abstain from the vote on the amendments since there is no point in amending a document which in itself bears no relation to the Community's needs.
We would have liked to see the Committee on Budgets and then Parliament pass a resolution saying that, in spite of the Council's behaviour and in spite of the fact that the Council has not solved these problems and has refused to commit itself, thereby helping to bring the Community even closer to ruin, we feel more responsible for the future of the Community than the Council apparently does; we are not therefore, on this occasion in the middle of the year, presenting another resolution rejecting the budget but we are nevertheless expressing our condemnation of the Council's methods and further action may ensue as a result.
In the present situation, if the proposal made by Mr Glinne were accepted, we would be ready to cooperate in drawing up this short statement which indicates a fundamentally negative opinion of the draft presented by the Council irrespective of any smallscale amendments which might be made. The fundamental point is that our opinion is a negative one since the scattering of 17 million units of account here and there will in no way alter the nature of the budget.
Having said this, I should like to turn to our colleagues in order to invite them to give some serious thought to the experience we have had, since one must draw lessons even from one's defeats. This is a defeat for Parliament. We came here wishing to advance the construction of Europe and we have tried to use our power to force the Commission to be more enterprising and the Council to be more able to take decisions, in the interests of developing the Community. But what we have found, particularly during this procedure, is that the Council doesn't give a damn about us, that the Council can act in the same way as it has for decades with the Commission, that is to say to allow time to pass without taking decisions and then - at the last moment, when the other party has its back to the wall, when all one can do is salvage the salvageable - present proposals which arrive late, which are inadequate and which are often quite unsound. The effect is to immobilize a Community which ought to be developing. This is qu
ite a widely-held attitude. We know the Council is more or less disregarding the undertaking it gave to engage in serious consultations before taking decisions. It has already begun saying that conciliation is pointless even when it is requested. Again, let us not forget that, although we asked the Council to discuss the appointment of the President of the new Commission with us, it decided not to do so. It did not forget: it decided not to. Now, in spite of this arrogant attitude, the Council is not a centre of effective action, it is not able to get things done. Its work is made up of improvisations and superficial treatment. Improvisations which take months and months to devise but which remain improvisations nevertheless, as we have seen in the way it has dealt with the British problem and the many other real problems of agricultural surpluses. It always takes a superficial view and is completely lacking in foresight.
While in my view - if we have any sense of responsibility towards the electorate - we must face up to the fact at the end of this long budgetary experience that this is the road which is leading the Community to its ruin. The Community has reached the point at which one might repeat something that was once said in Britain in the House of Lords: 'This Community is destined to mend or end', it cannot go on as it is. And let us not delude ourselves that the palliatives of the Three Wise Men or the Spierenburg report are enough. Thoughts are already turning at government level to a reform of the Community, partly in connection with our budget, and we can see this by the way things are turning out. They are thinking of reducing the Community to a simple association of States cooperating case by case, point by point, in different ways and numbers, a Europe 'à la carte' based on the principle of the 'fair return', i.e. increasingly creating a special fund each time something has to be done and then declaring that t
his is compulsory expenditure on which only the Council can take a decision. On this road lies the danger that the Community might become an empty shell.
Before it is too late, Parliament should initiate a grand debate on the crisis of the European institutions, not this or that defect of the Commission or the Council, but the institutional crisis in Europe. It must hold this debate in order to say which reforms are necessary and which must be submitted for ratification to the national parliaments in such a way as to give them something serious to look at so that our people can judge and our parliaments decide.
I therefore think that it was a good thing to have rejected the budget since it allowed us to see how strong we are when we are united. We must draw some profit even from this outcome which is equivalent to a defeat, a victory for inaction. The outcome today must not lead us to resignation but to prepare a new strategy, a much bigger campaign than we have waged so far.
