MEPs vote to increase EU budget, including development

Rejecting calls by some member states for drastic cuts, the European Parliament voted on Wednesday to increase next year’s EU budget — including an extra 400 million euros ($505 million) for international development and humanitarian assistance. By a 464-186 vote with 46 abstentions, members of the European Parliament decided Wednesday to raise the 2015 budget to 146.38 billion euros from the 142.14 billion initially proposed by the European Commission, the EU’s executive arm. The Parliament sided with the Commission against the Council of member states, which asked to reduce the budget by 2.1 billion euros. In September, the European Parliament’s influential Committee on Development had warned against the Council-proposed cuts, and urged the EU to provide an appropriate budget allowing it to pursue its humanitarian aid actions. The EU’s budget headaches are compounded by the accumulating debt of previous years, which is routinely stacked to the following year. This way, the weight of unpaid bills since 2011 may reach 25 billion euros at the end of 2014. In a debate in Strasbourg on Tuesday, Belgian liberal MEP Gérard Deprez, author of a report on the EU’s budget woes, said the Commission must first obtain extra funds to fill the gaps in its 2014 budget. “We need to have an agreement on this before negotiations on the 2015 budget with the Council can start,” Deprez explained. “This is a position unanimously supported by all political groups.” Parliament and the Council have until Nov. 17 to reach an agreement, which will be put to a vote in Parliament on Nov. 26. The European NGO platform CONCORD welcomed the Parliament’s decision to go against the Council’s proposed cuts. “This is no time to be cutting essential support, now that global development and humanitarian challenges are growing. The vote shows that the EU Parliament realizes this,” said CONCORD Advocacy Coordinator Lonne Poissonnier. However, she regretted that the Parliament did not do more to reduce the shortfall in the 2014 budget, which she said was “weighing heavily” on current development and humanitarian aid programs. According to Oxfam’s Deputy Director for Advocacy Natalia Alonso, the cuts proposed by EU member states would have devastating effects. “Too many children wouldn't get the education for better jobs and too many farmers wouldn't get the help they need to grow food. Several countries, such as Haiti, Somalia, Ethiopia and in the Sahel, are already feeling the impacts of the slowdown in payments on EU humanitarian aid,” she said. Late payments and contract delays would also affect NGOs and small contractors, says CONCORD’s Poissonnier. “Some European NGOs might be able to survive cash flow difficulties, but smaller, local NGOs in developing countries could end up closing projects and cutting jobs.” MEPs finally also approved on Wednesday the new European Commission led by Jean-Claude Juncker of Luxembourg. Among his 27 vice presidents and commissioners, Croat Neven Mimica will be in charge of international cooperation and development replacing Andris Piebalgs, Cypriot Christos Stylianides takes over from Kristalina Georgieva as commissioner for humanitarian aid and crisis management and Italian Federica Mogherini becomes the EU’s new foreign policy czar. Juncker’s team will officially take office on Nov. 1. Read more development aid news online, and subscribe to The Development Newswire to receive top international development headlines from the world’s leading donors, news sources and opinion leaders — emailed to you FREE every business day.