WIREDGOV

The €123 billion EU budget for 2011 shows a 1% surplus (€1.49 billion). In other words, 99% of the budget were implemented last year. These are the figures in the draft amending budget 3 adopted by the European Commission yesterday. This is the lowest surplus in recent years (see table below).

According to budgetary rules, the €1.49 billion will reduce accordingly the contributions of the Member States to next year's EU budget.

The surplus consists mainly of competition fines cashed in towards the end of the year (about €0.7 billion) and of minor under implementation of various parts of the EU budget (about €0.7 billion, of which €0.3 billion from the Commission).

"Of course, one could find it contradictory that the 2011 budget shows a small surplus when we announced that we could not pay €11bn worth of bills that arrived last December, says EU Commissioner for Financial Programming and Budget Janusz Lewandowski. This is mainly due to two reasons: on the one hand it is immensely difficult to shift funds from one part of the EU budget to another; on the other budgetary procedures are very slow and late sources of income cannot always be processed by the end of the budgetary year. This is also why the European Commission keeps pressing Member States and the European Parliament to agree to make the EU budget more flexible, more in line with real life. Regrettably, so far we have not been successful in achieving the flexibility that we need to react quickly to new developments. With the existing rigid rules, achieving a 1% surplus is the best possible result".

For more information

Homepage of Janusz Lewandowski, Commissioner for Financial Programming and Budget

http://ec.europa.eu/commission_2010-2014/lewandowski/index_en.htm

Homepage DG Financial Programming and Budget:

http://ec.europa.eu/budget/index_en.cfm

Contacts :

Patrizio Fiorilli (+32 2 295 81 32)

Monika Sikorska (+32 2 295 23 92)