Budget Commissioner Piotr Serafin vowed to consider legal changes after a high-stakes Wednesday meeting to prevent parliament rebellion against a key part of the Commission’s €2 trillion budget proposal.
Parliament has threatened to reject a €865 billion plan to merge farmer and regional subsidies in the next seven-year EU budget unless the Commission meets seven demands by 12 November, lawmakers warned in a letter last week.
“We are reflecting on the right process, but it’s clear that we need to think about the legal changes,” said Serafin, who declined to comment on whether the Commission was willing to actually amend the proposal.
“There will be the necessary movement in order to come towards the priorities that the Parliament has backed,” Agriculture Commissioner Christophe Hansen told MEPs earlier in the day.
Wednesday morning, MEPs had not seen any official proposal from the Commission, according to Siegfried Mureșan, co-lead negotiator from Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s own centre-right EPP. “Only political declarations of intention are not sufficient,” he said.
Yet in the meeting, promises were all he got. “We saw declarations of intention to accommodate the Parliament,” Mureșan said after the talks. He and his centre-left S&D counterpart Carla Tavares said it was a good meeting but maintained their demands. “They need to amend the proposal,” Tavares said.
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The buck is now passed to a three-way meeting between the Commission, Parliament, and EU countries.
Serafin said von der Leyen intends to convene a formal budgetary meeting with the Danish presidency and Parliament President Roberta Metsola, citing a specific article on budgetary deliberations under the EU treaty.
(aw)
