THE WEEK THAT WAS... (October 21, 2013)

The European Parliament postponed a vote on the 2014-2020 EU budget for the November session. That means that the €960 billion package not will be implemented by the planned 1 January 2014 deadline. This EU’s long term budget, officially called the multi-annual financial framework (MFF), has to come from the memberstates. Well not of all of them: there are net contributors (among them Germany as absolute biggest payer and the Netherlands as relatively the biggest payer) and net receivers (with Poland as the biggest one on that side together with all former communist member states).

The vote in the parliament is conditional on the payment of a portion of the amending budget for 2013, an amount of €3.9 billion. The Lithuanian EU Presidency forgot to put this amending budget on the agenda of the European Council (heads of the EU member states) on October 19. Now it needs an extra Council meeting on October 30. But it is even more complicated. The Council tried to link the €3.9 billion to another payment of €430 million for flood compensation for Germany, Austria and some other memberstates. But the Parliament rejected that linkage.

But don’t worry, a shut-down à la USA will not happen. In the absence of an agreement on the long-term budget, the 2013 budget will apply for 2014.

In the meantime, the main subject for the parliamentarians this week is talking and guessing while zipping their drink in the countless bars in the Strasbourg EP building about who is going to be the successor of Barroso after the May 2014 elections. For the first time it will be the EP that elect the Commission President. However, the European Council has still the privilege of nominating the candidate to lead the European Commission. Can we expect another ‘trial of strength’ between EP and Council?