The European Budget: finding the method best suited to a major reform.
Notre Europe's viewpoint | 19/03/2008 

At the end of 2000, high drama at the Nice European Summit left the actors in shock. The failure of the 2007-2013 Financial Perspectives negotiations in June 2005 under Luxembourg's presidency and their arduous outcome six months later left a rather bitter taste in the mouth. Petty calculation and last minute horse trading: is the European Budget fated to hit rock bottom?

In September 2007, the European Commission put its retaliation in first, and sought to advance a "wide ranging reform of community finances". In accordance with the Council's mandate, it launched a public consultation setting the scene for the review of the EU budget. Has the Commission taken the right choices in preparing this review? This is open to debate. For whereas past experience shows that any in-depth reform of European budget presupposes a joint onslaught on the three constitutive elements of the budgetary system (expenditures, revenue and procedures), the Commission has been inclined so far to focus on future EU priorities and on the spending needs.

This is the backdrop to Eulalia Rubio's warning in her policy paper "EU Budget Review: Addressing the Thorny Issues". She sets forth an analysis of the political context which will impinge on the budgetary review and surmises that a political debate on European expenditure priorities is unlikely to lead to major changes in expenditure allocations, even less a key mid-term reform of the European budgetary system. However the Commission is still in a position to fine-tune its method. Between now and next autumn, it could thus move on from a debate "within the rules" to a debate "on the rules". This would allow it to tackle head on such thorny questions as EU's own resources and the European decision-making system.

There will not be a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty, so has decided the House of Commons on the 5th of March. However the parliamentary ratification process is not over yet nor is the matter settled since 63 Lib-Dem MPs abstained as they called for a national consultation on UK membership of - or withdrawal from - the European Union. A concerned neighbour, Irishman Peter Sutherland has sharpened his best pen to show in "Westminster in the Fog. Europe cut off" how capital it is for the British people like for all its European partners that the United Kingdom at long last took a constructed stance towards Europe




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In view
EU Budget Review: Addressing the Thorny Issues
Policy paper by Eulalia Rubio | 07/03/2008
Has the Commission taken the right choices in preparing the 2008/2009 budgetary review? Despite the fact that the Council mandate describes the review as a comprehensive assessment of both expenditures and revenues, there are hints that the Commission will concentrate on the first. In fact, in the Commission's speeches and documents, the budgetary review is frequently portrayed as a policy-driven exercise to discuss future EU priorities and spending needs. This paper argues that such a narrow focus on expenditures is not coherent with the Commission's ambition to use the review to catalyse a "further-reaching reform of EU finances".
See also
Fog in Westminster. Europe cut off
Policy paper by Peter Sutherland | 19/03/2008
The original version is available on the Federal Trust Website. Logically and politically, it is a perfectly tenable position to argue against British membership of the European Union. There are many advocates of that position who have presented the case cogently and sincerely. As an Irishman, I profoundly disagree with this perception of Britain's national interest as potentially lying outside the European Union. But I accept that such disagreement on my part is arguably neither here nor there. The focus of this pamphlet is rather different, on an issue in respect of which everyone who lives in this country and indeed in the other countries of the European Union has a legitimate interest.