Duff to revise controversial reform plans

Group leaders rejected plans for EU-wide constituency.

Andrew Duff, a UK Liberal MEP, has launched a salvage operation to recover something from his contentious proposal for reform of the European Parliament elections, which hit the rocks last week.

The Parliament’s political group leaders decided last Thursday (8 March) not to go ahead with a debate and vote on the plan, which had been scheduled for this week (12-15 March). The report was in danger of being rejected after the centre-right European People’s Party (EPP) group decided on Wednesday (7 March) not to back it.

The reform proposal included the contentious idea of creating a Europe-wide electoral list for the selection of 25 MEPs. It also called for moving the European elections from June to May, revising the distribution of seats among member states and updating rules on MEPs’ privileges and immunities. Most of these ideas would require the approval of the member states to go ahead.

Fresh ideas

Duff said he would review his draft and present new ideas to the political group leaders in the coming weeks. He claimed that the other main political groups, including the Socialists and Democrats (S&D), the Liberals, and the Greens, still backed his plan. Hannes Swoboda, leader of the S&D group, said that more discussion was needed on the proposed reforms.

György Schöpflin, a Hungarian centre-right MEP, said the plan to create a Europe-wide constituency was dead for the time being, but added that other parts of the report were likely to be kept alive. He said changes to seat distribution would have to be approved because the Parliament will have to be reconfigured before the 2014 European elections, to take account of Croatia’s accession to the EU in 2013.

An earlier attempt by Duff to secure support for reform failed last July after the political groups withdrew the report from the plenary agenda, because of widespread confusion among MEPs about the proposals. Many MEPs are concerned that the creation of a transnational election list of 25 MEPs will weaken the influence of smaller member states and will create two classes of members.

MEPs have appealed to member states to fund the EU’s 2013 budget properly so that there are no shortages of funds for regional aid programmes.

MEPs passed a resolution on Wednesday (14 March) warning member states not to repeat what they said was a mistake during the negotiations on the EU’s 2012 budget, when countries pushed MEPs and the Commission to limit an increase in spending to 1.86% from the previous year. To meet that limit, member states pushed through cuts to the budgets for cohesion and regional aid programmes, which MEPs believe will later this year leave the EU short of funds to fulfil its legal obligation to pay out for projects that have already been approved.

MEPs are afraid that member states will push for similar restraint in next year’s budget, the last of the current 2007-13 financial period. Member states habitually submit most demands for reimbursement of regional aid programmes at the end of the EU’s seven-year spending cycle. The European Parliament said a restricted EU budget would not be able to meet the expected increase in demands for payments for such projects.

MEPs said in their resolution that an increase in spending was unavoidable. “Catching up will be necessary in terms of payments,” their resolution said, adding that a delay in meeting contractual obligations could result in interest charges for late payment as well as a “loss of confidence in European policies and the EU institutions’ credibility”.

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Budget difficulties

Janusz Lewandowski, the European commissioner for financial programming and budget, told MEPs that payments in cohesion and other regional aid programmes had reached “cruising speed”. The commissioner is expected to call for a “substantial increase” in payments when he publishes his draft budget for 2013 on 25 April, Commission officials said. Lewandowski briefed his fellow commissioners on Tuesday (13 March), explaining the difficulties that the EU budget will face next year. He stressed the need for an increase, which he said was needed to cover the EU’s legal obligations to pay for already- implemented aid programmes.

Alain Lamassoure, a French centre-right MEP who chairs the Parliament’s budgets committee, said the EU budget was in an “impossible situation” as it was stuck between demands for austerity from member states and legal obligations to pay for aid programmes.

The budgets committee and the Parliament’s bureau, made up of the president, the 14 vice-presidents and five quaestors, agreed on Tuesday to cap an increase in the Parliament’s administrative budget for 2013 to 1.9% as compared to this year. The bureau had initially proposed a 2.96% increase.

Lewandowski appealed in January for EU institutions to keep increases in administrative spending “below the forecast inflation of 1.9%”.

Aid to Haiti

MEPs are preparing to criticise the European Commission over how it organised the European Union’s assistance to Haiti when it was hit by an earthquake in 2010. The Parliament’s budgetary control committee is on Tuesday (20 March) to discuss a report drafted by Ingeborg Grässle, a German centre-right MEP, who led a five-member trip to Haiti from 22-26 February to assess EU aid projects.

In her draft report on the mission, Grässle says EU control systems that are meant to make sure aid was being spent properly are “inadequate”. She says that it was nearly impossible to trace where EU funds ended up after they were given to the Haitian government. She also complains of insufficient co-ordination between the EU delegation in Haiti and the Commission’s humanitarian aid department, ECHO.

Grässle is recommending that the EU’s future humanitarian and development aid to the country be filtered through a special procurement agency.

The Commission will be asked to respond to Grässle’s report at a later meeting of the committee.