This Budget Review is said to “set out structure and direction of the Union’s future spending priorities, assessing what offers the best added value and most effective results. It will also examine how the budget works, how to get the right balance between continuity and responding to new challenges, and whether it should be managed differently. Finally, the review will take a fresh look at the best way of providing the resources necessary to fund EU policies”.
Therefore the Commission launched a Public Consultation to invite input to the Commission’s budget review 2008-2009, which will itself be the subject of a fundamental debate in the EU institutions and the Member States. The Consultation will form an important basis for the Commission’s work on the review.
It will be complemented by preparatory action in key spending areas where the Union has made a major investment and where effective use of the budget is particularly important to the success of the policy. The Common Agricultural Policy will undergo a "health check" to fine-tune the 2003 reforms and contribute to the discussion on future priorities in the field of agriculture. The fourth Cohesion Report adopted in May looked at progress in reducing regional disparities and evaluated the results of Cohesion Policy to date.
The Public Consultation on the 2008/2009 Budget Review will run until 15 April 2008.
Background
In April 2006, the European Parliament and the Council reached an agreement on the Community financial framework for 2007-2013. Total expenditure for this period was set at 866.4 billion euros.
The EU currently invests around 0.48 % of its budget for actions promoting active citizenship, health and consumer protection, programmes fostering European culture and diversity, including its cinematographic and audiovisual heritage, as well as an instrument for major emergencies to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of civil protection and early warning systems covering all types of hazards.
Twenty years after the first financial framework, the European Parliament, the Council and the Commission agreed in a May 2006 Interinstitutional Agreement that the Commission should undertake a fundamental review of the EU budget. The Commission was invited "to undertake a full, wide ranging review covering all aspects of EU spending, including the CAP, and of resources, including the UK rebate, to report in 2008/9."
Main Actors
The Consultation is being undertaken by the European Commission, DG Financial Programming and Budget.
The target group of the Consultation is stakeholders and interested parties at local, regional, national and European levels.
The following is a brief overview of specific existing stakeholder views:
Some Public sector Groups stress that the EU budget should be based on the transparency, democracy, sufficiency and equality principles and should be more geared to increasing in research, competitiveness, growth and jobs.
Some Citizens Groups suggest that the EU should reduce the budget for the Common Agriculture Policy and increase the one for environment protection.
EPHA Comments
EPHA believes that the Budget Review is needed because the European Union’s policy agenda is now in a phase of profound modernisation. Globalisation has brought about new challenges like climate change, energy and migration. Public health is more than ever at the core of citizen’s concerns. Enlargement has reinforced the need to promote health equality as well as social and economic cohesion.
The European Union will need to devote higher priorities of policy and spending to ensure the essential prerequisites and necessary systems for protecting, maintening and promoting high and equitable standards of public health and wellbeing among all citizens, across all Member States. This is currently far from being the case.
This Public Consultation in view of the 2008/2009 Budget Review will thus be a good opportunity to express public health interests. EPHA will thus prepare a response to this Consultation.
EPHA is in the process of finalising its response to the consultation and will circulate it to members in time for comments before the deadline.
Timeline
Monday 7 April 2008: EPHA to circulate draft response to members for comments.
Friday 11 April 2008: Deadline for members’ comments.
Tuesday 15 April 2008: DG Financial Programming and Budget deadline for Public Consultation.
End May 2008: conference closing the consultation.
End 2008/2009: Commission presents the review.
