EU-begrotingsonderhandelingen zorgen voor uitblijven van bezuinigingen op Europese Commissie (en)

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - The European Commission's plan to recruit 250 new staff from Romania and Bulgaria next year looks safe after MEPs and member states dropped Finnish EU presidency plans to slash the commission's 2007 budget by €56 million - but the budget wrangle is far from over with foreign policy spending still causing strife.

The staff-cut plans were ditched during acrimonious 12 hour-long talks between Finnish diplomats and the European Parliament which ended at 22:00 local time in Brussels on Tuesday (21 November), after it emerged that Italy, Spain and Poland were also strongly opposed to Helsinki's plan.

MEPs are still officially threatening to freeze the €56 million in a budget reserve box unless the commission carries out a "screening" of departments to see, for example, if DG enlargement still needs to be so big after 2004, but recent promises on screening by top civil servant Catherine Day should see the freeze threat lifted next month.

Meanwhile, the acrimony remains as parliament pushes member states to consult with it before deciding to launch expensive Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) missions such as the upcoming EU Kosovo peacekeeping mission, with MEPs still threatening to cut 2007's €170 million CFSP spending in half if they don't get their way.

"We asked for a letter to explain precisely what they wanted, but they were not able to provide us with such a letter for some reason, so the meeting had to end with the presidency still unclear on parliament's CFSP desiderata," an EU diplomat said.

A parliament official explained the letter was not sent because it has to be formally drafted by the foreign affairs committee, which will supply a text ahead of the next budget talks on 28 November, adding that member states know exactly what MEPs want because the CFSP consultation agreement has been around since 2002.

"They are playing below the belt," the parliament contact said. "In the past they have not honoured the [2002 deal on CFSP consultation], sending people to the consultation meetings who were not high-level enough to know what is going on. The Kosovo mission...came out of the blue. "

In terms of overall spending next year, MEPs dropped demands to increase payments from the planned €115 billion to €120 billion but the agreements on commission spending and overall spending will hang in the balance until the 28 November talks, as the EU budget negotiations take place on an all-or-nothing package basis.