Spending preview

Swedish centre-right MEP Christofer Fjellner, who will draft the Parliament’s report on EU spending in 2010, gave a sneak preview on Tuesday (25 October) of the verdict that the EU’s auditors will deliver next month. Fjellner said that he expected the error rate for the EU’s cohesion policy and regional aid to be above the 5.5% level of last year, because more money has been paid out to member states.

In the past, the calculation of the error rate has been a bone of contention between the Commission and the auditors. Fjellner said that the Parliament’s budgetary control committee would be looking at how the Commission controls hundreds of regional funds that are used to pay for projects such as new bridges. He said too little attention had been paid to checking whether these funds complied with EU rules. The European Court of Auditors (ECA) is to present its report on the implementation of the EU’s budget for 2010 on 10 November.

A Parliament for the eurozone

Pervenche Berès, a veteran French centre-left MEP, has called for the creation of a eurozone sub-committee of the Parliament’s economics and monetary affairs committee. Moreover, she has suggested that only MEPs from eurozone nations would be allowed to join the sub-committee and vote.

On Monday (24 October), Berès told the Parliament’s economic and monetary affairs committee that such a sub-committee was needed to improve the Parliament’s oversight of eurozone member states in the light of the more frequent eurozone ministerial meetings and summits.

Her idea came under immediate attack from other members of the committee, who warned that it would accentuate a two-tier EU and create two classes of MEPs. Olle Schmidt, a Swedish Liberal MEP, condemned the proposal during the meeting. Officials from Berès’ S&D group said it was not official group policy. Spokespeople from the EPP and ECR groups said they would not back the proposal. The economic and monetary affairs committee, which Berès chaired in 2007-09, is to vote on her recommendation on 21 November.

The Parliament had no such hesitations about creating a special committee to investigate the power and influence of the mafia in the EU, approving the innovation on 25 October. The committee is to draft legislative recommendations on how better to combat the mafia’s cross-border activities.

Busy presidents

Herman Van Rompuy, the European Council president, and José Manuel Barroso, the European Commission president, rebuffed a request from MEPs that they should attend a special debate in the European Parliament on Tuesday (25 October) on the eurozone’s debt crisis.

A spokesman for Van Rompuy said that the president could not attend because he was busy preparing for Wednesday’s European Council. Barroso was meeting Traian Basescu, Romania’s president, in Brussels.

Instead, Jacek Dominik, Poland’s deputy minister of finance, spoke for the Council of Ministers and László Andor, the European commissioner for employment, social affairs and inclusion, for the Commission.