German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder defended Germany's stance today to keep EU spending capped at current levels and said support funds must be concentrated on the bloc's new members to the east.
Gerhard Schroeder
Debate is raging over whether the Union should increase spending in its 2007-2013 budget despite concerns from many member states that their individual national coffers are already too strained.
The European Union's new regional aid commissioner, Danuta Huebner of Poland, vowed to back a proposal from former Commission President Romano Prodi to raise the bloc's spending to 1.14 per cent of its gross national income (GNI).
But the EU members with the deepest pockets, Austria, Britain, France, Germany, Sweden and the Netherlands, are demanding that spending be capped at the current level of one per cent of GNI.
"The budget of the European Union needs to stay under a limit that is acceptable for countries who are net contributors," said Schroeder, in remarks prepared for a speech during a one-day visit in Bulgaria.
"We have tabled a proposal with France, Great Britain, Sweden, the Netherlands and Austria that guarantees solid financing of European projects for the future."
Under Prodi's proposal, the EU's annual budget would grow to €158.5 billion in 2013 from €133.6 billion in 2007.
Some 40 per cent of that would go to regional development funds, mostly to build roads and other transport infrastructure, clean the environment, restructure industry, and create jobs in underdeveloped regions.
It would also allow poorer but older EU member states like Portugal, Greece, and Spain, which have claimed the lion's share of EU development funds in recent years, to continue receiving aid.
But Schroeder argued that "European solidarity" could work only if all of the countries could eventually contribute, and that aid should mainly to the Union's newest members catch up with the richer west so they could contribute.
"The European support stream must be concentrated on eastern and south eastern Europe in the future, and those who have received support must be able to give support themselves," he said.
Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Slovenia, Malta and Cyprus became members of the EU in May, while Bulgaria and Romania, two of Europe's poorest countries, are planning to join in 2007.