The European Commission is likely to recommend an increase in the EU’s budget for 2012 when it presents its proposal on 20 April, despite member-state calls for restraint. Janusz Lewandowski, the European commissioner for financial programming and budget, said that the member states and the European Parliament should approve spending levels going beyond the 2.9% increase agreed to for this year’s EU budget.

The Polish commissioner calculates that next year’s EU budget “should be bigger” to take account of the increased payments that the EU will have to make for cohesion and regional aid policy programmes, many of which are only now being implemented.

These programmes are now “maturing”, he said, meaning the bulk of money promised during the current 2007-13 financial programme to pay for the projects was now coming due. “We have upgraded forecasts, which are very ambitious, much more ambitious than for 2011,” Lewandowski told European Voice.

This level of spending was a reality that had to be accepted by member states and those MEPs keen on slashing EU spending, the commissioner added. “Credibility means paying for the bills,” said Lewandowski.

But he acknowledges that the budget will also have to reflect ongoing austerity across Europe: “To increase our credibility, we have to indicate that we understand what is [happening] outside the Berlaymont and outside the Parliament.” The proposal would be “as self-restrained in administration costs as possible”.

Cutting costs

Lewandowski claims that the austerity message is being taken to heart within the institutions. He says that he has already received positive responses from Commission services and the Council of Ministers to appeals to limit expenditure in their administrative budgets, so as to demonstrate to taxpayers that the EU was also doing its part to cut costs. He said the Commission would “maintain” its own zero-growth budget strategy for 2012. But from MEPs he had not yet had enough feedback as to what they would do to cut the Parliament’s expenditure.

Cuts in administrative spending are vital to counter accusations from national level of EU waste. “The easiest way to attack not only the European budget, but also the European Union as such, is through the administrative expenditure, al

though this is only 5.7% of the total budget,” said Lewandowski.

Diplomats and MEPs expect another tough round of negotiations on the next annual budget. The talks will not be made any easier by the timing: they will overlap with the launch of discussions on the new post-2013 budgetary period in the second half of this year. The UK, the Netherlands and Sweden are already putting pressure on other member states to limit EU spending both for the annual budget and for the new spending programme, after 2013.

? Lewandowksi rejected French suggestions of reducing levels of cohesion funding to eastern member states. In his view, regional and structural aid will still be needed for years. “Europe is absolutely not cohesive,” he said. “There are still two parts of Europe.”

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