Külügyi Szemle - A Teleki László Intézet Külpolitikai Tanulmányok Központja folyóirata - 2003 (2. évfolyam)
2003 / 2. szám - EURÓPA - Claus Juul Nielsen: Together in One Europe
Together in One Europe but aimed to keeping people engaged in rural production. At the same time Hungary already have a rather environmental friendly production and therefore should be interested in a policy, which forces its competitors into the same kind of production. So perhaps there could also - at least to a certain extend - be a meeting of minds between us in this area of reforms. The renewal of the EU budget A budget reform of course will be closely related to a reform of the agricultural policy as the latter occupies 50-something % of the common EU budget. The rest of this budget is mostly allocated to the regional funds and to the fund for social cohesion leaving very little for new policies, such as environment, research, new technology, energy etc. A reform becomes even more complicated, because member states traditionally are focusing strongly on their net position towards the budget despite the fact, that their advantages as members are only to a very limited degree reflected in the budget and the budget in general is very small compared the federal budgets of the US or even Germany - approximately of the size of the budget of the Netherlands or some 1.2 % of the aggregated GNP in the present EU - meaning that no effect on integration can be traced from the budget. This attitude was reflected in the agreement between France and Germany reached during the Danish Presidency by which agricultural spending cannot be cut under the present level before 2013. On top of this the enlargement also requires extra financing after 2006, when the Berlin framework, which was the financial basis for the negotiations in Copenhagen, expires. The contradictory positions of both old and new member states combined with the fact that extra funding is needed if the EU shall be developed further, will make the coming negotiations extremely tense and difficult. To reach a result will require both a reallocation of net positions and increased contributions from member states meaning an increase in the EU's own incomes. This is a very difficult equation to solve not least for new members. On the one side Denmark is a limited net contributor and Hungary a limited net receiver and 1 think, our two countries want to retain this positions giving us some grounds for common positions. On the other side the flows from the budget will be very different for Denmark and Hungary, because we benefit from different policies and to various degrees, which of course on certain point will make it difficult for us to find common positions. The Copenhagen Summit was exactly an example of such a battle about net positions 2003. nyár 'll
