§ Mr. Spearingasked the Chancellor of the Exchequer where obligatory and non-obligatory expenditures of the EEC are set out or defined in any Community Treaty or other document; and on what basis compulsory or non-compulsory expenditures are defined in any consultation procedure between Assembly and Council.
§ Mr. Joel Barnett:The terms "obligatory" and "non-obligatory" expenditure and "compulsory" and non-compulsory "expenditure do not appear in any Community Treaty nor are they defined in any formal document. They are used for convenience to describe the two categories of expenditure defined in the Treaties as
expenditure necessarily resulting from this Treaty or from acts adopted in accordance therewith ",which is referred to as obligatory or compulsory expenditure, and
expenditure other than that necessarily resulting from this Treaty or of acts adopted in accordance therewithwhich is referred to as non-obligatory or non-compulsory expenditure.
The definition of the two areas of expenditure is settled by agreement between the Council and the Assembly. This is based on a working classification prepared by the Commission which is each year set out in detail in Annex A of the Commission Section (Volume 4) of the preliminary draft budget.