Committee on Budgets

Budget 2011 (Commission - Section III)

The EP rapporteur on Budget 2011 (Commission - Section III) is Sidonia Elżbieta Jędrzejewska MEP (EPP, Poland). This is the first annual budgetary procedure that is going to run entirely under the new rules set out in the Treaty of Lisbon.

Report on Budgetary Priorities 2011

The EP resolution on priorities for the 2011 budget was the starting point of the annual budgetary procedure. It was adopted in the MARCH II part-session of the European Parliament with an overwhelming majority. This report normally represents the Parliament's response to the Annual Policy Strategy (APS) of the European Commission. However, this year, and due to a delay in appointing the new Commission, no APS has been proposed for 2011. Therefore, the European Parliament was the first EU Institution to present its budgetary priorities for 2011.

The main points of the report can be summarised, as follows:

• The European Parliament endorsed the rapporteur's key political proposal, namely to place “youth and education” at the heart of next year's budget. In this context, youth policy is defined broadly, including notions like training, employment, mobility, innovation and research, as well as the transition between different stages in one's life (e.g from education to the labour market).
  
• Special reference is made to the global economic crisis and the current implementation of the EERP, while stressing the decisive role that SMEs can play in the development of a competitive EU economy.
  
• The report calls for the need to establish a strong and comprehensive "EU 2020" strategy and for clear and ambitious financial commitments in the course of the budgetary procedure to match these priorities.
  
• Several specific priorities are also identified per Heading of the Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF), such as GMES, simplification of EU Structural Funds management, fight against climate change, effective implementation of the Stockholm Programme goals, operation and financing of the European External Action Service.
  
• The report includes a number of budgetary considerations with regard to the narrow margins that result from the ceilings set out in the MFF for 2011 and reiterates Parliament's conviction that an in-depth adaptation, review and revision of the MFF is a necessity.
  

Next step in the procedure: Adoption of the Draft Budget by the European Commission (27 April 2010).

Chronology of the 2011 budgetary procedure