European Commission adopts EU draft budget 2012

European Commission adopts EU draft budget 2012

2011-04-20 21:22:11 GMT+7 (ICT)

BRUSSELS (BNO NEWS) -- The European Commission on Wednesday adopted the EU draft budget 2012 aimed at helping around 500 million Europeans in times of austerity.

Budget and Financial Programming Commissioner Janusz Lewandowski presented the draft budget for 2012 consisting in $192.66 billion (€132.7 billion), a 4.9 percent increase than in 2011.

"The Draft Budget adopted today focuses on the EU and its citizens. We have opted for investing in areas that contribute to economic growth and development: the EU budget is an anti-crisis package," said the Commissioner.

The Commission decided for a freeze of its administrative expenditure for 2012 by significantly reducing expenditure linked to buildings, information and communication technology, studies, publications, missions, conferences and meetings.

Some funds were cut from programs or initiatives that are not performing as expected such as the Development Cooperation Instrument which budget was reduced by $102.7 million (€70.7 million).

In addition, the Industrialized Countries Instrument was reduced by $21.06 million (€14.5 million) due to low performance and delay in adoption of the new legal base. Galileo funding was decreased by $36.17 million (€24.9 million) as well.

"We owe it to the European taxpayer. Savings must include looking seriously at what we are doing and asking ourselves whether everything we do brings genuine benefit to the whole of Europe," said Commissioner Lewandowski.

Despite the funding cuts, the EU draft budget 2012 was increased in order to afford the reimbursement payments for regional authorities in the many EU projects across Europe which were launched in 2007 to the benefit of local communities and businesses.

"Stopping such projects half-way through would be detrimental to whole communities. We cannot punish our citizens, companies, local and regional authorities who have a right to get their bills paid," added Lewandowski.

The draft budget also included $83.85 billion (€57.7 billion) to be paid in 2012 for sustainable growth to help Member States increase their investments in these areas whereas $91 billion (€62.6 billion) was allocated to the Europe 2020 priorities, an increase of 5.1v percent on the previous year.

The European Council will announced its position on the EU draft budget 2012 the following June, followed by the European Parliament on October. The final 2012 budget is expected to be adopted by the Parliament in November.

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