Tag: financial framework

Before the end of the month, the European Commission will present guidelines that will allow EU member states to remove toxic assets from banks' balance sheets and help unclog credit flow without distorting competition.

In this article of the Quarterly “Integration” of the Institut für Europäische Politik (IEP), Peter Becker analyses the Status Quo of the financial perspective 2007-2013 and examines the member states’s win-lose logic that lies at the heart of this process, identifying it as the core problem behind the enlarged-EU’s inability to reform.

German economy minister Michael Glos challenges the Commission's powers to define which kinds of investments are relevant to the EU's Jobs and Growth strategy.

A new report on the financial implications of enlargement calls on the Council, Commission and the Member States to include the European Parliament in the process for adopting EU negotiating positions on agriculture, regional policy and budget.

The Agriculture Ministers of the 15 Member States started a debate on enlargement at their meeting on 18 February in Brussels, that also opens the question of agricultural reform after 2006. On the same day, Agriculture Ministers from 12 candidate countries presented their views of the Commission's proposal for negotiations of agricultural issues to the European Parliament Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development.

EU finance ministers rejected the Commission's proposal for direct payments to farmers in the new Member States at their first discussion of the financial framework for enlargement on 12 February. Whilst most ministers gave their broad support to the Commission's budgetary package, several Member States insisted that the proposal phased in subsidies too fast, and that the candidate countries should not receive budgetary compensation after enlargement.

The biggest payers to the EU budget, in particular Germany, Britain, the Netherlands and Sweden, insisted on reducing the financial burden of enlargement at their first discussion of this issue. At the informal meeting of EU foreign ministers in Cáceres on 9 February, they proposed reducing the Commission's suggested budget of 40 billion euro for enlargement to 32 billion, for the period 2004-2006.