No 2011 budget: the diplomatic service affected, but not sunk!

David O'Sullivan, the Chief Operating Officer (administrative general secretary) of the EU's diplomatic service, will be able to tear out the last hair that remains on his head. The refusal of some Member States, the "stingy club" (the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Sweden), to approve the 2011 budget, will cause him some "worries" in the weeks to come.

Ministers and deputies could not agree, in conciliation, on a 2011 budget, up slightly (+2,9% against more than 6% proposed by the European Commission at the start) and especially on the additional conditions ( procedure, margin of flexibility, revision of the budgetary perspectives, etc. required by the European Parliament. As the Lisbon Treaty provides, the budgetary procedure must be approved strictly within the deadline. And the Commission must now start work from scratch. How is it going to happen ? And on what basis of proposal should we start again? No one really knows (1).

But the "experts work". The European Commissioner for the Budget, Janusz Lewandowski, is on the breach too, "in permanent meeting“We are assured. What seems likely is that there will be no agreement before December 31. And in this case, we will be required to move on to provisional execution by twelfth. Precisely, we take the 2010 budget, we divide by 12. And, each month, each institution receives this share to manage its programs, according to the same breakdown as in 2010. In other words..."Not easy, easy"as one budget specialist concedes.

Daily difficulties

Admittedly, this "non-decision" will not condemn the Diplomatic Service to inaction, as we were able to write quickly. No. But it will singularly complicate the existence and operation at least for the next few months. It's not so much a question of finding the necessary resources from elsewhere, but day-to-day difficulties. From an accounting point of view, the diplomatic service will have to continue to manage two budgets: one for the Council, the other for the Commission, without the possibility of changing the situation within a single budget line - as in any administration. So to make choices and groups. Because the diplomatic service is above all a big restructuring and reorganization of the services rather than the creation ex nihilo of a new institution. For example, how to merge posts of civil servants, one of whom is paid by the Council and the Commission. And how do you make forecasts over several months, when your budget is only advanced to you every month? Difficult.

Recruitment and moving slowed down?

Similarly, the planned recruitments of 118 new people will not stop. But they are "doomed to be done drop by drop" is recognized in the entourage of Cathy Ashton. The High Representative had obtained an increase in her budget of 9,5 million euros for the first recruitments in 2010. For the rest of the recruitments, over a full year, she had to have a little over 33 million euros. We are therefore short of about 23 million euros (out of an overall budget of almost 500 million euros). It is not huge. But we will therefore have to wait a little to proceed with all the recruitments envisaged. Ditto for the move to the new building of the diplomatic service (planned for the spring). Renting this building should not pose a problem. In the negotiations with Axa, it was planned a deductible of two years of rental - in other words free for two years, on condition that you then pay the missing months - The problem concerns rather the layout of the premises, security... A little more than 3 million euros are missing. They will have to be found elsewhere...

Some Member States not celebrating

However, the diplomatic service could not be the only one to toast... The Member States too. This is the paradox of the situation. According to the information gathered, for example, direct agricultural payments are generally reimbursed to the Member States, largely (80%) in January. With the system of provisional 1/12ths, impossible. And agricultural states like France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Romania... will have to live, a little more, on credit. Ditto in the event of a natural disaster or major economic layoffs, the Solidarity Funds and the Globalization Fund, which operate with a special rectifying budget for each disaster (natural or social), will be put to the test. The European Commission could therefore drag out these files... As for the Iter program (nuclear research), it will not have the planned increase. And too bad for the United Kingdom which wanted to develop it! Etc.

(1) Article 314.8 of the Treaty provides only one thing. If the conciliation fails, the European Commission must make a new proposal. How and according to what procedure this new proposal is made, nothing is mentioned. One can imagine that, according to the principle of parallelism of the procedures, one repeats exactly the same procedure. But nothing prevents proceeding otherwise... If the two arms of the budgetary authority (European Parliament and Council of Ministers of the EU) agree, things can go quite quickly. From there to complete everything by the New Year, it seems "hard" however, admits an expert on the file.

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