Strasbourg, 26th October 2016 – ECR Spokesman on budgetary affairs Bernd Koelmel from the German party Alliance for Progress and Renewal sees a lack of sustainability within today’s resolution of the European Parliament on the EU-Budget for the year 2017: "The other two major parliamentary groups don’t want to make any cuts. This is crystal clear. Every year they want to spend more and more money without clear concepts and without any proof on efficiency. It’s always the same shotgun approach as we know it”, Koelmel said.

Koelmel on the other hand welcomes a new aid fund for terror victims the plenary agreed on today, an idea that was originally derived from him and was strongly supported by his group. Koelmel also expressed his satisfaction with an increase of the Europol Budget. The ECR group supported a respective compromise put forward by the EPP.

“The European Parliament wants 162 Billion Euros. This is four per cent more than last year and this is still 2.6 per cent more than the Commission and the Council have suggested”, said Kölmel. “The ECR group made precise proposals for Budget cuttings of over 500 million Euro that unfortunately were rejected in plenary. We want to scrap the funding of campaigns of front runners in European elections and we think it’s time to get rid of one of the seats of the parliament. We also think that there should be harder conditions for payments in the EU-Turkey migration deal.”

Koelmel pointed out that the aid fund for terror victims was a success for the ECR group: "These five million Euros will effectively help those who have been traumatised in Paris, Brussels, Ansbach and Wuerzburg. But in the end the European Parliament should set its priorities more sustainably in future years”.

ENDS

Notes: To read a comprehensive set of proposals on EU budgetary reform, authored by Mr Koelmel, go to: http://ecrgroup.eu/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/203471-ECR-BROCHURE-A4-EN.pdf

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