1981 BUDGET PROCEDURE: SECOND READING IN THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT

by Altiero Spinelli

SUMMARY: This is the last stage in the 1981 budget procedure, the modest results of which are largely attributable to the obstructive conduct of the Council and the Commission but also, in part, derive from the low profile adopted by the majority of the Parliament, which is still adversedly influenced by the ill-fated battle over the 1980 budget.

The troubled situation also has repercussions, for the first time, on the solidarity of the Parliament which, by a majority, rejects the motion for a resolution presented by the rapporteur of the Committee on Budgets, Pietro Adonnino. "Speeches in European Parliament, 1976-1986", Pier Virgilio Dastoli Editor. (EP, 16 December 1980)

Mr President, since time is short, I will do as my colleagues have done and speak only on the budget for the Commission, that is, the operating budget. I would first, however, like to touch briefly on an item in the budget of Parliament.

In the Parliament's budget we have approved for the second time - or rather for the third time, since there was a budget which was rejected and then voted on again - an item on monetary compensation for members of the European Parliament which was merely a token entry. I hope this has occurred for the last time, and that by next year Parliament will realize that in all self-respecting parliaments the members are paid from the parliamentary budget itself and not by another authority. We are still in this transitory situation, and in order to change it we do not need - as our Committee on Legal Affairs seems to think to request the Council to approve a regulation saying that Members of Parliament are to receive a certain salary: we need only to enter a sum in the budget, a sum specified according to precise criteria which may be the same as those followed by the Council. I hope, therefore, that this anomalous situation will be brought to an end.

I will go on to the budget of the Commission, that is, to the activity of the Community. I would especially like to express my admiration of Mr Adonnino and Mr Dankert, who are unfortunately not present, for their great skill in what Mr Adonnino called budgetary engineering! They gave proof of great ingenuity, considering the conditions under which they had to work. I see that 2% of the EAGGF Guarantee Section is now in reserve, and this is considered to be an extraordinary success. I really do not understand why it should be so considered, for this reserved sum must in effect be used if the workings of regulations and prices demand it, and it will certainly not be enough to cover the price increases foreseen by the Agricultural Council for the coming spring.

Mr Adonnino expressed satisfaction because the Council finally included some token entries for things is has not yet decided upon. Once, several years ago, Parliament fought against token entries, urging that each item have a corresponding amount earmarked for it. Now we have arrived at the point where we think the inclusion of a token entry for a programme which perhaps may not even be put into effect is a great advantage, though the Council in reality makes no commitment to act upon it. One of the things that astonished me was the satisfaction shown over the fact that the Council promises us to include the discussion on borrowing and lending in the discussion concerning the budget. What we asked was the inclusion of these operations in the budget, not the inclusion of a discussion of a document summarizing a discussion on borrowing and lending. We want to have something to say in the assumption of debts and the granting of loans. For three or four years now the Council, at the end of every year when the bu

dget is being drawn up, assures us that in the coming year it will issue the pertinent regulation, and then we always end up exactly where we were.

I wish to compliment Mr Dankert, who was able to take advantage of the fact that the Commission presented a supplementary budget at the end of the year and seize the opportunity to use the remaining margins for manoeuver, which can than be transferred to the 1981 budget.

All these small things are indeed interesting; they are retouches, or, if you will, products of 'budgetary engineering', but they effect no substantive changes in the budget. This budget was already inadequate when it was first presented by the Commission, the Council made it even more inadequate, in the opinion of Parliament; and now we are to be satisfied with something which is midway between the original proposal of the Commission and that of the Council. As an overall judgment on the budget as a whole, a term was used in the other sitting - and Mr Adonnino also wrote it into the first point of his resolution - namely 'transitional budget'. In reading this, I was reminded of Mephistopheles who told the student that it was a very good thing to study philosophy, because 'wo ein Begriff fehlt, da steht ein 'Wort bereit': when an idea is lacking, there is always a world to fill the gap. Thus, this budget is I transitional'. We should say rather, if we want to be truthful, that this budget is basically one of

immobility, due to the fact that in all these years neither the Commission nor the Council took any initiative aimed at Preparing the Community to face the problems which it would surely have to meet.

I will not repeat what has been said by the rapporteurs of the parliamentary committees to the effect that only insignificant accomplishments have been made regarding cooperation with third countries; they are even more insignificant when one considers that any serious prospect of rejuvenating our own economy must be studied in connection with a definite policy of aid to development for these countries. As for what has been said regarding social policy, transports and regional policy, I have nothing to add to the criticisms already made. Neither has anything been done about borrowing and lending operations.

The problem of compulsory and non-compulsory expenditure is still up in the air, and I wish to appeal once again to Parliament to realize that it is time to have done with this game where the Council says that an item of expenditure is compulsory and we say that it isn't. We should say that a given item of expenditure is non-compulsory, treat it as such, reinscribe it - even if the Council blocks it at the second reading - and write in the pertinent budget commentary, that is, in something which will become Community law, that this expenditure is non-compulsory, or we must resolve upon resorting to the Court, so that it may decide if the Council can arbitrarily determine that an expenditure is compulsory, even when it obviously arises from a political decision and not from obligations laid down in the Treaties or in existing Community laws. Instead we do neither the one nor the other, and by a majority decision we rejected the notion of including such a commentary: we say so in a resolution. It is useless to

put it in a resolution. We should say that this budget is not what it should be; this budget is an expression, in terms of income and expenditure of a Community which is unable to alter its misguided policies. For years we have been faced with a mistaken policy regarding agricultural prices, and we are unable to change it. The Community develops the necessary policies in only an inadequate and casual manner, with no overall plan. It is unable to find new resources; it is even unable to produce an overall programme saying: this is the Community's line of development, as was set down in the Treaty. In the first period of its existence the developmental programme of the Community was known. Now this or that is casually asserted, and when a commitment is assumed it is not even known whether or not it will be carried through. In this situation such a budget is the inevitable result.

Several political commitments have now been entered into. The European Council has asked the Commission to prepare measures for controlling agricultural expenditure in order to obtain a better balance between the various budgetary items. Since so much has been said about a mandate from the Council to the Commission - the Commission should not be obliged to accept a mandate even though it can be requested to do so - it should be emphasized that the new Commission has, as of November, another mandate from the Parliament: we approved a resolution asking that measures be taken in the near future to modify the policy on agricultural prices and the system of own resources. We also requested something else which the Council has not yet given us:we asked that the Commission present an overall programme at the beginI ning of the year, requesting its adoption by the Council and by the Parliament. We must commit ourselves to certain definite activities during the year, and then the collaboration we talk about could be

established between the various institutions.

I would like now to urge members to pay close attention to the programme which the new President, Mr Thorn, will present to us, to the conditions we will set for our vote of confidence, and to the commitments which the Council will or will not assume at the beginning of the year. If we don't want the next budget to be a replica of this one, it should be based on that programme and on those commitments, and not on casual actions developed from one moment to the next.

For these reasons, we Italian Communists will vote against the budget and against the resolution proposing its adoption. With this rejection we intend to express our severe and negative judgment on the disgraceful situation into which the Commission and the Council have allowed the Commun'ty to fall.

Before concluding, I should like to address the outgoing Commission, probably for the last time. I believe that you must certainly feel humiliated by the miserable final budget you were obliged to propose, and which you will now see approved. I hope, however, that you also realize that you yourselves had a great responsibility in these last four years, and especially in this last year. If you had come to us and said: we fought, we used our prerogatives, we took initiative, but we were defeated, and for this reason we must be satisfied with this budget, I would have proposed a vote of approval here for your action, even though it was unsuccessful. But you were not defeated; you did not even fight; you surrendered politically year after year, and this budget is only the final surrender. It is you who have fathered this budget: we are only working to develop it.

Many of you will return to sit on the new Commission, and I hope that all its members, the new and the old, will in the next four years reassume the position of leadership in the construction of Europe which you have at present abdicated.