Annual EU budgets could be back on the menu after the EP budget committee has threatened to end the current Inter-Institutional Agreement on the financial perspective.

 

The Austrian presidency has reacted with astonishment, calling the EP budget committee's latest move unhelpful: "It is not objectively necessary, nor meaningful," said a source in the Austrian ministry of finance, according to Der Standard.

 

However, the unanimous vote of the committee on 6 March suggests that the EP sees the matter differently. The EP has consistently demanded a bigger budget than the 862 euro billion deal reached at the EU summit in December 2005.  

 

If the threat of the Budget Committee to end the current Inter-Institutional Agreement is carried out, it would exclude the possibility of rolling forward the current structure of the EU Budget from 2007 onwards.

 

Instead it will allow the EP to keep the more advantageous treaty provisions that would then be the only basis if the talks on the next Financial Perspective eventually fail. This would mean hammering out the budget annually instead of the 7-year Financial Perspective

 

The issue will be on the agenda of the EP's plenary session, 22-23 March.