The European Parliament adopted, by a large majority, the resolution by Jan MULDER (ELDR, NL) and Neena GILL (PES, UK). The budget that MEPs are proposing for 2004 seeks to provide sufficient funding for enlargement and the EU's external policy commitments while still observing the principles of sound financial management. (Please refer to the summary dated 4 December 2003 of procedure BUD/2003/2001).
The Budget for 2004 as adopted by the Parliament for EU-15 amounts to EUR 99 528 million in commitments and EUR 94 618 million in payments, whereas the budget figures agreed for EU-25 account for EUR 111 300 million in commitments and
EUR 99 724 million in payments, whereas these levels of payments represent only 0.98% of estimated GNI for the year 2004, compared to 1.06% for EU-15 and 1.10% for EU-25 as established by the Financial Perspective, and leaving a margin of EUR 7 655 million
for EU-15 and of EUR 11 829 million for EU-25.
The Commission's letter concerning the executability of the amendments adopted to the draft budget 2004 was taken into consideration, whereas the overall amount of payment appropriations has been maintained at the lowest acceptable level, i.e. at 2,3% over Budget 2003 for EU-25, in accordance with the agreement reached at the conciliation meeting of 24 November 2003.
More specifically, as regards the budget of the other institutions, the House notes that heading 5 will be under considerable pressure in 2005 due, among other things, to the effects that the new gross national income estimates will have on the technical adjustment of the Financial Perspective and the resulting reduction of the ceiling. Parliament recalls that all the Secretaries General of the institutions presented an estimation of needs in 2005 in the third report on the evolution of heading 5 and it points out that the estimation provided is no longer compatible with the adjusted ceiling of the Financial Perspective in 2005.
Furthermore, Parliament urges all institutions, therefore, to fine-tune and scale down their needs when they present their 2005 estimates of expenditure, so that the ceiling of heading 5 is not exceeded, as is also outlined in the attached declaration on heading 5.
It requests its Bureau and its Secretary-General, to work out a smooth and swift financial structure for paying the various costs related to Parliament's involvement in the Parliamentary Assembly of the WTO in Parliament's budget, when preparing the
budgetary estimates for 2005, and to take appropriate action to this end during the financial year 2004.
The budget as adopted by the Parliament at second reading, includes several declarations made at the time of conciliation on 24 November 2003.�