Presidency announces emergency meeting

Special meeting of finance and budget ministers to be held in December.

Emergency talks have been called in a bid to salvage negotiations on the European Union’s budget for 2011.

Negotiations between the European Parliament and member states broke up in failure early on Tuesday (16 November). Although the Parliament conceded that the budget for 2011 should be limited to a 2.9% increase on 2010 levels, the UK, the Netherlands and Sweden refused to give a greater role to MEPs in future discussions on the next multi-annual spending programme after 2013.

Didier Reynders, Belgium’s finance minister, said yesterday (17 November) that he would convene a special meeting of finance and budget ministers on 16 December, just ahead of a two-day summit of EU leaders, which starts that same day.

If no budget is agreed before 1 January, then the development of the European External Action Service is threatened, along with the establishment of three strengthened regulatory committee for the financial markets. Funding for various EU projects would be frozen or delayed.

Poland, a main beneficiary of EU aid programmes, said failure to get a new budget in place would rattle the financial markets, which are already in turmoil over the eurozone’s debt crisis.

“We are very concerned at the overall impact of this on the EU. It’s sending a very bad signal with the Irishsituation,” said Mikolaj Dowgielewicz, Poland’s secretary of state for European affairs.

Alain Lamassoure, who chairs the Parliament’s budgets committee, said he expected a last-ditch effort at the summit of EU leaders to reach a compromise.

“We hope that we can continue our discussion and our negotiations with the European Council, if we are not able to reach a conclusion with the budget ministers,” he said.

José Manuel Barroso, the president of the European Commission, appealed to MEPs and member states “to show responsibility and work as quickly as possible” to get a deal. He criticised the Netherlands, the UK and Sweden for not wanting “to negotiate in the European spirit”.