§ Mr. Torneyasked the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he will make a statement about the meeting of the budget council in Brussels on 22 March.
§ Mr. Denzil DaviesThe budget council met to consider a possible council resolution on future budgetary procedure and also the proposals contained in the Commission's preliminary draft supplementary and amending budget No. 1 for 1979. I represented the United Kingdom.
The council was unable to achieve the unanimity necessary for a council resolution on the introduction of an internal working procedure for the handling of future budgets. However, eight member States, including the United Kingdom, were able to agree on a formula which, while involving no change in the Treaty 236W provisions, is intended to avoid a repetition of the situation which arose on the 1979 budget. This should ensure that in future the council's decisions on individual budget items are consistent with its views on the maximum rate of increase applicable to non-obligatory expenditure, despite the different voting rules which apply to those decisions. These eight member States also agreed to record in the minutes of the council their agreement to this procedure and their intention to act in future in accordance with it.
On the supplementary and amending budget, the Council agreed to EMS interest rate subsidies—including provision for the refund of the United Kingdom's additional contributions—at a level of 245.4 MEUA, as proposed by the Commission, but entered this provisionally in the reserve chapter of the budget—chapter 100. It also agreed to the Commission's proposal to amend the level of commitment appropriations for the regional development fund to a new total of 945 MEUA. After rejecting all the remaining proposals put forward by the Commission, the council agreed to forward the revised draft to the Assembly with a proposal to increase the maximum rate to 27.27 per cent.