The Committee on Budgets adopted an own-initiative report by Jean-Luc DEHAENE (EPP, BE) and Anne E. JENSEN (ADLE, DK) on implementing measures for the system of own resources of the European Union.
Members recalled that Parliament has continuously called for the financing of the EU budget to return to a genuine system of own resources, as stipulated in the Treaty. From their point of view, national contributions to the EU budget, based on GNI, which amount nowadays to around 74 % of total EU revenue, cannot be considered as genuine own resources as they simply constitute transfers from national treasuries to the EU budget.
Members welcomed the Council’s agreement to lay down implementing measures for the Union’s own resources as provided for in the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union. They considered it regrettable, however, that the Council has decided to transfer the provisions related to the calculation of the GNI resources back to the Own Resources Decision.
The committee deplored the fact that the Council has not been able to make any progress on the reform of the own resources system on the basis of the legislative proposals put forward by the Commission in 2011. Parliament has consistently manifested its support for the Commission proposals, which – by reducing the share of national contributions to the EU budget to a maximum of 40%, abolishing the current purely statistical VAT-based contribution and replacing it by a genuine VAT-based EU resource, creating one new and genuine own resource and replacing all rebates and correction mechanisms by a system of lump sums for the period 2014-2020 – took a step in the right direction.
Members maintained its call for reform of the own resources system of the European Union in order to make it simple, transparent, fair, visible and understandable to EU citizens.
Lastly, they placed high expectations on the work of the High-Level Group on Own Resources, which it believes offers a unique opportunity to overcome the current blockage of the reform of the system of own resources.