A4-0017/94

Resolution on the draft general budget of the European Communities for the 1995 financial year - Section III - Commission

The European Parliament,

-having regard to the preliminary draft budget submitted by the Commission (COM(94)0400),

-having regard to the draft budget established by the Council on 25 July 1994 (C4-0110/94),

-having regard to the proposals for the adjustment of the financial perspective with a view to the enlargement of the European Union (COM(94)0398),

-having regard to its resolution of 24 March 1994 on guidelines for the 1995 budget,

-having regard to the report of the Committee on Budgets and the opinions of the other committees concerned (A4-0017/94)

A.whereas the Council's budget of 25 July 1994 has not respected the Interinstitutional Agreement of 29 October 1993 on the 1.21% GNP own resources ceiling, but has been drawn up with a ceiling of 1.20% of GNP,

B.whereas this has deprived the Community budget of ECU 596 m,

C.whereas this has occurred because one Member State blocked the relevant own resources decision, on account of its unwillingness to meet its obligations under Community law,

D.whereas the Council's budget does not fulfil the obligation cited in Article 1 of the Financial Regulation to vote a budget that 'sets out forecasts of, and authorizes in advance, the expected revenue and expenditure of the Communities for each year', as it does not take account of the foreseeable enlargement of the Community in 1995,

E.whereas, while the economic situation in the Community and its Member States has improved beyond the forecasts of early 1994, on the basis which the preliminary draft budget was drawn up, the budget must nevertheless be prudent and enable the Community to fulfil both its current commitments and its new obligations, so as to continue to play a role in the consolidation of economic recovery in Europe, and so as to allow the Union to act as a responsive and constructive partner through its common foreign and security policy,

General remarks

1.Believes that a budget should be adopted that fulfils the expectations of the citizens of the enlarged Community, that takes full account of the commitments in the Interinstitutional Agreement of 29 October 1993, made by the Member States at the Edinburgh European Summit; further believes that the budget should take account of the current economic situation in the enlarged Community and the new obligations of that Community;

2.Decides that all receipts and other justificatory information on Community expenditure should be made available to the Court of Auditors of the European Communities and the national courts of auditors;

3.Expresses its desire to arrive at a complete budget that respects the laws in force, while still complying with the own resources ceiling at 1.21% of GNP; confirms that the adopted budget will foresee all the expenditures for the enlarged Union;

4.Insists on the payment of fines levied against Member States which do not observe Community law;

5.Decides, therefore, to vote a budget up to the equivalent of 1.21 % of GNP, approving additional resources up to ECU 678 m, in comparison with Council's draft budget, particularly in the form of 'temporarily frozen payments' of ECU 596 m; these payments being frozen until the own resources decision is ratified;

6.Welcomes the fact that the Council has agreed the decision on the increase of the Community's own resources up to 1.21% of GNP, twenty-two months after the European summit decision at Edinburgh;

7.Nevertheless expresses reservations regarding the solution proposed in respect of milk quotas, and instructs its committee responsible to draw up a report on this subject;

8.Requests the other arm of the Budgetary Authority to urge the national parliaments to make the appropriate decisions on the Council's own resources Decision of 21 October 1994, approved by Parliament: states that the appropriations concerned will be unfrozen on the original lines in a supplementary and amending budget once all the Member States have ratified the own resources decision;

9.Emphasizes that these frozen payments do not imply any reduction of already agreed policies and obligations in the field of the structural funds and controlled thermo-nuclear fusion policy;

Revision of the financial perspective

10.Recalls that Article 24 of the Interinstitutional Agreement of 29 October 1993 provides for adjustment of the financial perspective at the time of enlargement in order to take account of the 'new requirements and resources' of the enlarged European Union;

11.Considers that since the entry into force of the financial perspective, new requirements have emerged with regard to both the internal and the external policies;

12.Notes the communication from the Commission on the adjustment of the financial perspective and requests the Council to open the negotiations without delay in order that an agreement may be reached by the end of November 1994, thereby enabling a vote to be taken on the 1995 budget in line with the commitments made in the IIA;

13.Approves of the fact that, at the first reading, certain appropriations have been voted subject to adjustment of the financial perspective;

14.Notes that, in the case of category 1, the appropriations voted correspond to foreseeable requirements arising from application of the agricultural legislation to the new Member States;

15.Considers it necessary, in the case of category 2, for the appropriations entered to take account of the additional effort which certain countries -having a per capita income below 90% of the average of the Community of 16 -will have to make in order to attain the parameters laid down by the Treaty on European Union;

16.Takes the view that the Commission's forecasts with regard to the internal policies are not consistent with the requirements which the Union will have to meet in 1995, given that, in addition to the programme for the textiles industry in Portugal and the application of the internal policies to the new member countries, the European Union must intensify its commitment to employment (White Paper), networks (telecommunications, transport, energy), policies to improve the quality of life of tomorrow's Europeans, culture, education and training (Socrates, Leonardo and Youth for Europe); finally, a special effort will need to be made for the regions of Ireland in order that the Union may make its contribution to safeguarding and consolidating peace;

17.Recognizes the new need urgently to support the peace process in both parts of Ireland through structural actions; recommends that extra funding be pencilled in for this new need in the financial perspective; requests the Commission, in cooperation with the governments of the countries concerned, to submit the development programmes which it will be possible to finance after the Council has adopted Parliament's proposals on the revision of the financial perspective;

18.As regards the external policies, points out that an increase in appropriations is necessary in order to develop a new Union initiative for the south of Europe (MEDA); approves, moreover, the financial effort made in support of the Union's sole CFSP action in Mostar, which action has highlighted the Council's inability to provide relevant funding in the context of the revision of the financial perspective, and considers that the financial perspective should be more ambitious in respect of funding for the CFSP and large-scale action with regard to economic and technical assistance for the Mediterranean countries;

19.Instructs its committee responsible to open negotiations with the Council with a view to ensuring appropriate funding for the Union for the period 1995-1999;

Classification

20.Recalls the position it has taken on the classification of expenditure, particularly its resolution of 24 October 1991 on the classification of expenditure in the budget, which argued that the type of expenditure could only be defined in relation to the form of the legal instrument, that is the basis for the action, and in consequence the compulsory character of expenditure is not derived from the item itself but from the implicit character of the legislation;

21.Notes that the Council has never replied to Parliament's invitations of 7 April, 7 July and 25 July 1994, asking the Council to justify its definitions line by line, on the basis of regulations in force; to facilitate Council's task, amends remarks on specific lines so as to indicate where all or part of the expenditure has a non-compulsory element;

22.Confirms its constructive attitude on matters of classification and, as in the past, its willingness to avoid any formal contestation once an agreement exists on the amounts to be entered in the budget; once again invites the Council to open a dialogue on the nature of each line;

Agriculture

23.Notes that the Council has accepted modifications during the ad hoc procedure, defined by the Interinstitutional Agreement of 29 October 1993, but regrets that other modifications have not been duly considered;

24.Approves the reduction of certain budget lines on which the Commission has a discretionary margin of appreciation, where current primary legislation does not create an obligation to pay a fixed (automatic) amount to beneficiaries; reminds the Commission of its obligation to implement the budget according to the appropriations authorized in accordance with Article 5 of the Financial Regulation; in a spirit of cooperation, invites the Council to a dialogue, before its second reading, in order to verify the amounts entered and to reach an agreement on them;

25.Approves, in particular, the cuts made in Chapter B1-30 concerning refunds on certain food products, given the marginal share of such products in the overall value of the final product;

26.Stresses that the accompanying measures must be converted into differentiated appropriations, which would make for better economic planning;

27.Considers that non-compliance with Community rules and regulations must lead not only to the repayment of sums not due, but also to the imposition of sanctions, whose financial effects must be recorded in the budget's statement of revenue;

Structural Funds

28.Welcomes the budget decisions on the Community initiatives that rationalize, and lend greater transparency to, the actions decided by the Commission;

29.Regrets that in its implementation of the 1994 budget, the Commission did not fully respect the will of Parliament concerning the division of funding between objective 3 and objective 4 regions; approves the reinstatement of the balance between these objectives by delaying funding on Community initiative ADAPT and bringing forward funding on the human resources initiatives Now, Horizon, and Youthstart;

30.Reaffirms its conviction that the initiative for the modernization of the Portuguese textile industry should be funded under category 3 of the financial perspective; notes that this funding is to commence already in 1994;

31.Calls on the Commission to ensure that the definition of the new planning instruments for the period 1991-1999 is such as to guarantee that the effort made in support of human resources is intensified by comparison with the previous period; calls on the Commission to ensure that with the adoption of the new Community support frameworks for objectives 2 and 5b, the negative trend recorded in objective 1 regions is reversed; also takes the view that the definition of the programmes under the new Community initiatives should provide the best opportunity for achieving the above goal; finally calls on the Commission, therefore, to provide a statement with each new proposal that describes the likely impact of the proposed measure on human resource development; asks that an analysis of the results of this increased support for human resources be presented during the implementation of the budget;

32.Deplores the fact that the Council deleted the appropriations entered in the preliminary draft budget for the THERMIE II programme, a breach of the conciliation procedure; welcomes the reinstatement of these appropriations which are indispensable, inter alia, for activities involving renewable energy sources which may enter the marketing phase;

33.Welcomes the fact that funding has been earmarked for the promotion, as part of Community tourism policy, of an information campaign concerning sexual tourism by Union citizens in third countries;

34.Hopes that the Commission will consider ways to improve private sector investment through Structural Fund actions;

35.Instructs its relevant committees to verify that the appropriations voted by the budgetary authority are implemented in the most efficient way possible;

Internal policies

36.Approves the decision to re-establish the preliminary draft budget in all sectors where the Council has made cuts without justification; in particular, points out that it has reinforced the new Socrates and Leonardo programmes, which are intended to promote education and training of young Europeans; decides, nevertheless, to enter part of these appropriations in the reserve, pending the adoption of the legal base, and invites the Commission to present a regular report to enable it to monitor the coordination between the two programmes, until the Council has adopted Parliament's amendments concerning the regulations of these two programmes, and urgently requests the Commission to present a report by 31 March 1995 to ensure that there is no duplication between the two programmes;

37.Declares that it will not tolerate the inclusion in the legislative act of the amounts deemed necessary, where the Treaty does not require it; invites the Council to accept the proposals contained in the Commission's communication to the budgetary authority (SEC(94)1106) and urges the Council to abandon this ineffective practice of entering an expenditure estimate in the legislation; instead believes that the budgetary authority should transform the financial statement into a coherent medium-term indicative programming instrument for budgetary allocations for Community policies;

38.Approves the decision to devote part of its margin to developing a common sustainable transport system, and underlines particularly the safety and environmental aspects by increasing the appropriations for transport safety and combined transport;

39.With regard to transport infrastructure within the Community, congratulates itself on defining the arrangements for using appropriations allocated to the various means of transport based on the objective of a sustainable policy; regrets that the Council has not come forward with an ecological strategy on transport;

40.Affirms that it has assured adequate financing for all social policies that have been jeopardised by the decisions of Council;

41.Expresses its support for the traditional European values of tolerance, understanding of different cultures, and respect for the wide variety of confessions and faiths; therefore decides to support measures to develop and broaden the debate about the evolution of European society, this debate being based on the great philosophical and religious traditions in Europe, aiming to examine the meaning and direction of European construction in a period of rapid change;

42.Decides also to promote solidarity at national and international level with the excluded, to foster tolerance, cultural diversity, intercultural learning and the fight against racism and anti-feminism, and to discover a sense of direction, beyond political and economic community, for the European Union and its peoples;

43.Welcomes the fact that research policy continues to develop thanks to the improvement in decision-making procedures, rationalized financing of the fourth framework programme and the strengthening of links between research and industry; repeats that it is committed to continuing research in thermonuclear fusion within this programme;

44.Urges that the conduct of the Community's information policy be managed more professionally: asks the Commission to prepare a report on the re-orientation of this policy; instructs its committee responsible to follow the matter;

Cooperation in the field of justice and home affairs

45.Takes the view that (part of) the cooperation in the field of justice and home affairs should be financed at Community level and calls on the Council to consider taking a decision on financing cooperation in the field of justice and home affairs on the basis of Article K.8 (2), second subparagraph, first indent, and to make contact with the European Parliament on this matter;

External policies

46.Recognises that the execution and management of the Phare and Tacis programmes has improved following Parliament's recommendations on decentralisation and local content, and that evaluating the success of projects has become more systematic, and welcomes the progress achieved;

47.Appreciates the efforts that the Commission has taken to involve the Parliament in the process of revision in view of the launch of new proposals at the Essen European Summit; nevertheless, expresses its concern about official financial controls and welcomes the Commission's undertaking to submit regular quarterly reports to the European Parliament on the PHARE programme setting out the allocation of funding by country and by sector;

48.Considers that the enlargement of the Community is likely to provide further weight to the need for a Mediterranean initiative, bringing together the countries of the wider Mediterranean region through technical assistance programmes, cooperation in research and development, and training and employment programmes; proposes that this new need be reflected in the financial perspective;

49.Welcomes, therefore, the budgetary decision to launch a new Mediterranean programme (MEDA) which stresses the Community's economic commitment to southern Europe and its neighbours; welcomes the Commission's decision to launch the Mediterranean basin initiative, and looks to the European Summit in Essen to provide its wholehearted support for this action; acknowledges its continued support to the Middle-East peace process;

50.Welcomes the increased efforts to promote the process of reconstruction and development in South Africa, following the democratic elections there in April 1994; decides to fund a programme that will help consolidate economic development and democracy there;

51.Expresses its desire to provide economic and other support to the developing regions of the world and to the populations suffering from famine, war and disease and other severe crises, though it recognises that the decision-making processes in the international community are sometimes slow and inadequate confronted with the gravity of the crisis, such as in Rwanda;

52.Welcomes the continuing normalisation in Chile and records that the form of its aid to that country will change as the situation there further improves;

53.Welcomes the fact that, in the last year, framework partnership agreements have been signed by the European Community Humanitarian Office (ECHO) with its major development partners which have been instrumental in accelerating the response capacity of the European Union on matters related to humanitarian aid;

54.Proposes that the common foreign and security policy of the Union, with its first decisions on actions to be undertaken, should be properly established through appropriations entered in separate lines within Sub-section B8 of the budget, with an amount in the reserve for planned and unforeseen actions;

55.Takes note of the appreciable effort made to provide funding through the Community budget for the joint action decided by the Member States for MOSTAR, given the inability of those same Member States to guarantee funding for their action; recalls, nevertheless, that where the Union budget provides funding, the appropriations cannot be released except with the consent of the budgetary authority to the use of the funds, and with the Commission's participation in the management of the action;

56.Welcomes the creation of a new budget line intended, following the Rio Conference, to ensure the participation of the European Union in the World Environmental Facility, unlike the Council which wants to restrict such participation to the Member States on an individual basis;

57.Considers it useful for discussion to begin on reviewing the structure of the budgetary nomenclature of the Union's external actions in preparation for the 1996 budget;

58.Instructs its appropriate parliamentary committees to review the presentation of category 4 of the Budget, so that it gives a better reflection of the changed emphasis of the European Union's external policy as amended by the Treaty on European Union, to enable the Budgets Committee to present to the European Parliament revised chapters in category 4 for the 1996 and future budgets;

Administrative expenditure

59.Considers that the institutions must have the means to function efficiently and fulfil the responsibilities conferred on them by the Treaty on European Union;

60.Believes that strengthening the human resources of the Commission is a priority for the 1995 budget, particularly in the sectors of anti-dumping, and of measures to implement the conclusions of the White Paper on Growth, Competitiveness and Employment and in the sector of financial control on the use of structural and other funds; welcomes the decision to grant appropriations in the reserve for 210 new posts ; recalls the importance of these posts which will permit, inter alia, consolidation of anti-dumping activities, for which at least 118 new posts (permanent and temporary) will be needed in two parts, the second in 1996, and the strengthening of external delegations, especially in countries where the Community funds technical assistance or supports economic and social development, where a minimum of 12 new posts should be attributed to such new delegations during 1995, and calls on the Commission to submit a report to Parliament before 31 January 1995 on the functioning of these external delegations;

61.Encourages the Commission to continue converting appropriations into posts to reinforce the autonomy and independence of the Institution; supports its efforts to redeploy staff between services based on the new political priorities; requests that a report be submitted to the budgetary authority during the first quarter of 1995 on the attribution of the new posts financed in 1995 and on mobility;

Specific tasks

62.Notes the amendments adopted in Part A-3 of the budget, takes a positive view of the fact that the Union budget is able to fund an increasing number of activities related to the development of the European idea, but considers it essential that the Commission, before submitting the 1996 preliminary draft budget, should submit a report to the budgetary authority evaluating the activities of all the organizations receiving a Community subsidy with a view to producing a cost-effectiveness assessment of the various operations financed from this part of the budget; asks the Commission to bring forward clear and operational criteria to be fulfilled by those who might receive such subsidies;

Interinstitutional cooperation

63.Is troubled at the paltry level of interinstitutional cooperation in administrative and staff matters; is totally dissatisfied with the unimaginative and wasteful guidelines proposed by the European Council and supported by the Commission for the new Translation Centre, which should be able to serve all institutions, not solely the specialised agencies; stresses that the money involved for future translation services (be it internal or by external translators) will be blocked until an overall cost-effective schedule is presented by the Commission and approved by the budgetary authority;

64.Proposes that the Commission and Parliament set up their information and representation offices jointly in one building in the new Member States, and that the same arrangement be adopted in all Member States by the year 2000;

65.Calls on the Council and Commission to take significant practical steps towards constructive and useful interinstitutional cooperation, so as to reduce the proportion of administrative expenditure in the overall budget, and to make the European public service even more efficient;

66.Is determined that it will not continue to commit taxpayers' money to support ill-conceived agencies, and remote and separate bureaucracies answering to no elected authority, as a result of national or institutional parochialism;

Specialised agencies

67.Regrets that the Member States meeting in the Council are pursuing a policy of creating a multiplicity of new agencies and institutions with independent services, an independence which is seldom justified, and which burdens the budget; reminds Member States that it is their ill-considered decisions that have fuelled this bureaucratic growth;

68.Repeats that it is indispensable that the budgetary authority be able to exercise a priori control on all financial commitments which would have a direct impact on the Community budget;

69.Draws attention to the social problems posed by the transfer of the CEDEFOP headquarters from Berlin to Thessaloniki and requests the Commission to submit practical proposals on this matter without delay;

70.Invites all Commission representatives in Administrative Councils to submit beforehand to the budgetary authority the draft decisions of agencies, which have a significant direct or indirect impact on the Community budget;

European Schools

71.Requests the governing and administrative bodies of the European Schools to maintain the impetus for reform, in particular with regard to commitments made in the last two years; urges the schools to introduce a tax compensation scheme that places teachers on a comparable footing; asks the Member States to fulfil their commitments to provide adequate school accommodation, and to assume a greater share of the financial burden of the teachers' salaries through basic national salaries, including for part-time teachers;

72.Decides to divide the European Schools budget lines to add a line budgetising all receipts during the year, and the unbudgetised reserve; recommends that the financial regulation of the schools be revised to exclude the possibility of such unbudgetised reserves;

Enlargement

73.Notes that the 1995 budget, as voted at first reading, provides appropriations directly linked to enlargement of the Community; is aware of the fact, moreoever, that these forecasts should be revised after enlargement and therefore considers it necessary for a supplementary and amending budget to be submitted to the budgetary authority during 1995;

Reuse

74.Notes that the forecasts for reuse of appropriations authorized in the budget are not always in line with the outturn in financial year n-2; takes the view that a more reliable analysis must be submitted and that additional efforts must be made in sectors where such revenue can be increased (eg. publications);

Revenue

75.Reaffirms its resolve to enter all revenue foreseeable at the time of adoption of the budget, in particular in respect of the taxes accruing from the new posts funded in the 1994 budget and as regards appropriations reused;

76.Takes the view that all the penalties which private individuals or states are required to pay to the Community should be entered in the 'revenue' side of the budget, and considers that this must apply likewise to compliance with regulations in the agricultural sphere, particularly the regulation on milk quotas, non-compliance with which must entail a penalty to be entered in Article B1-370;

Appropriations entered in the reserve

77.Stresses its intention to maintain a degree of budgetary control and to improve political transparency by entering certain appropriations in the reserve, for example on the following actions:

-Socrates & Leonardo - because of the absence of a legal base

-Thermo-nuclear fusion - because of the absence of a legal base

-210 new posts pending early retirement proposals

-12 posts until initiatives to set up EC delegations in Sri Lanka and Nicaragua are underway

-Migrants Forum - with a view to stimulating the activities of this body and ensuring a more democratic representation

-European Investment Fund - the Commission is requested to submit a report on the results of this Fund's activity;

78.Instructs its President to forward this resolution to the Community Institutions and bodies concerned.