During the meeting of the Committee on Budgets (BUDG) in the EP in Brussels, MEPs vote on the Next MFF - Preparing the Parliament’s position on the MFF post-2020. The results are: 29 in favour, 4 against and 3 abstentions. Statements by Jan OLBRYCHT (EPP, PL) and Isabelle THOMAS (S&D, FR), Co-rapporteurs

Brussels

statement

meeting

vote

THOMAS, Isabelle (S&D, FR)

Committee on Budgets

OLBRYCHT, Jan (EPP, PL)

Multiannual financial framework 2021-2027 (T)

Next MFF - Preparing the Parliament’s position on the MFF post-2020: extracts from the vote and statements by Jan OLBRYCHT (EPP, PL) and Isabelle THOMAS (S&D, FR), Co-rapporteurs

Vote is opend, voting and end results, applause, (18 shots), Panel at 01:42  TOTAL 36, + 29, - 4, abstention 3

SOUNDBITE (English), Jan OLBRYCHT (EPP, PL), Our position is that we agree that there is new challenges we have to take on board. These priorities are linked with actual situation in Europe; the first is a question of security.

SOUNDBITE (English), Jan OLBRYCHT (EPP, PL), In many Member States, especially the richer one, they say we want zero. One mean less then today and off course these countries, these governments they say we can do more of this, it sounds good but is not possible. Is not possible, today we cannot do it, so that is why we say 1.3 means the budget should be bigger in term of contribution because we will not have money from UK. So I think we should fulfil this gap.

SOUNDBITE (English), Jan OLBRYCHT (EPP, PL), When the government says: we are not in the hurry; we do not have the same agenda like Parliament and the Commission and we think it shouldn't be done later.

SOUNDBITE (English), Jan OLBRYCHT (EPP, PL), The real question for the governments, not for the Parliament, is: do you want to start on time? Do you want to be prepared, do you want to tell to people, to the citizens, that we are ready to do the investments and give money for the small and medium enterprises or we don't want to do it on time and we accept that it will be late. So we don't agree as Parliament, we think we should do everything possible to make extraordinary way but we should be ready before and we would like to avoid the debate about the money during the Parliamentary elections because this is the problem. We can imagine, we are politicians, we know that all political parties will use the argument concerning money from Europe. Some of them would say, we should save money, the other would say we should give money. It will be one of the biggest element of the campaign. We should think about people, we should think about the concrete investments.

SOUNDBITE (French), Isabelle THOMAS (S&amp;D, FR), It is a strong and clear message that the European Parliament is sending to the Council. First the departure of the UK should not be a pre-text to renounce of our European ambitions, second we are in favour to raise the budget line, but not in the sense to spend it inflationary, but simply to compensate the departure of the UK and to maintain our programme.

SOUNDBITE (French), Isabelle THOMAS (S&amp;D, FR), We are talking about not to collect it from the National budgets, but to find it within the own EU resources&rsquo;, how it was the case at the origin of the EU, 70% of the resources of the EU didn&rsquo;t come from the Member States. We need to go back to this system to put the heavy weight of financing away from National budgets and at the same time achieve more fiscal justice.

SOUNDBITE (French), Isabelle THOMAS (S&amp;D, FR), The message we have to the Council this morning: we need to launch immediately the negotiations together with the EP. We will see how long it will take, but from experience we know that it takes a while. In case we take too much time, it will not be the Council or the European Parliament that will suffer consequences, it will be the citizens when there will be delay in payments for Erasmus, PAC, for the laboratory research, that will inflict difficult situation which we cannot accept, so we call upon the Council to launch negotiations from today on.