29.7.2008   

EN

Official Journal of the European Union

C 192/1

(a)

no criteria have been laid down to determine on an objective basis whether a budgetary burden is excessive and when a Member State should benefit from a correction;

(b)

there is no mechanism for monitoring, over time, whether a budgetary burden continues to be excessive and whether it is still justified that a Member State benefits from a correction; and

(c)

there is no mechanism which would allow Member States other than those explicitly mentioned in the proposal to qualify for a correction,

1.

The Commission's proposal for a Council Regulation amending Regulation (EC, Euratom) No 1150/2000 updates the rules for the implementation of the new Decision 2007/436/EC, Euratom on the system of the European Communities' own resources, in particular:

2.

Furthermore, it takes into consideration the evolution of Community legislation since the last amendments introduced by Regulation (EC, Euratom) No 2028/2004. The main elements concern:

3.

The proposed Regulation as well as the Decision 2007/436/EC, Euratom should enter into force once Member States have adopted the Decision in accordance with their constitutional requirements, with retroactive effect as of 1 January 2007.

4.

The concerns expressed in the Court's Opinion No 2/2006 on the added complexity of the amended system of the European Communities' own resources were not taken into account in Decision 2007/436/EC, Euratom. The Court concluded that this Decision moved further away from an own resources system based on clear and generally applied mechanisms, towards national contributions negotiated on a country by country basis.

5.

Furthermore, the Opinion called on the Commission to reconsider the legal form of the document setting out provisions on calculation, financing, payment and entry in the budget of the correction of budgetary imbalances in favour of the United Kingdom. The Court considers that the Commission proposal under examination should have included such provisions.

6.

The modifications proposed by the Commission in COM(2008) 223 final generally update the provisions for the implemention of Decision 2007/436/EC, Euratom.

7.

The Court welcomes the other amendments proposed which aim to update references, terms and rules in the areas of GNP/GNI, EAGGF/EAGF and reserves (relating to loans, loan guarantees and for emergency aid), and to provide a revised and consolidated text of Article 10. It also supports the proposed new provisions intended to improve the Commission's management of own resources accounts.

8.

Article 1(4) of the Commission's proposal foresees that Article 3(2) of Regulation (EC, Euratom) No 1150/2000 is replaced by a new text regarding the keeping of supporting documents relating to the statistical procedures and bases referred to in the GNI Regulation (11). The previous text also included the same rule relating to VAT resources which in the Court's view should be maintained.

9.

Throughout the text of the Commission's proposal (12), the ‘UK correction’ is referred to as the ‘correction granted to the United Kingdom for budgetary imbalances’, except for Article 1(6) introducing a modification to Article 6(3)(c), which refers to the ‘correction granted to the United Kingdom’. In order to ensure consistency, this needs to be modified.

10.

Article 1(8) of the Commission's proposal provides a consolidated version of Article 10. The proposed Article 10(9) concerns the gross reduction granted to the Netherlands and to Sweden, introduced by Decision 2007/436/EC, Euratom. In the second sentence, it is stated that there shall be no subsequent revision of the financing of that gross reduction in the event of subsequent modification of the GNI figure. The Court understands that this lack of subsequent revision might be justified on the basis of cost-effectiveness, but it considers that in principle this is not in line with the objective of equity, recalled by the European Council on several occasions.

11.

As in the previous system of the European Communities' own resources, Article 2(7) of Decision 2007/436/EC, Euratom states that should modifications to the European System of Accounts (13) (ESA 95) result in significant changes in the GNI as provided by the Commission, the Council, after consulting the European Parliament, shall decide whether these modifications shall apply for the purposes of own resources. The same Decision also introduced a new Article 3(3) which states that should such modifications indeed apply, the ceilings of the annual appropriations for payments and commitments shall be recalculated using a specified formula (14). In order to allow a consistent application of these rules, in case of further revisions of ESA 95, the Court proposes that implementing provisions should be included in the amendment of Regulation (EC, Euratom) No 1150/2000 to set out principles defining the term ‘significant changes’.