EURO NEWS

MEPS reject budget, saying â€Å“austerity doesnâ€â„¢t workâ€Â THE EUROPEAN Parliament last week challenged EU leaders to come up with a more generous budget by rejecting the seven-year spending plan put forward in February. In a decisive 506-161 vote against long-term belt-tightening, MEPs threw down the gauntlet and demanded that the European Council must boost spending and deliver a fairer, more efficient and more transparent budget for the period 2014 to 2020. EU leaders had proposed applying national-style austerity measures to the budget and trimming it overall by 3.3 per cent. But MEPs insisted that â€Å“austerity doesnâ€â„¢t work,â€Â highlighting the growing problem of payment shortfalls in EU programmes, including the Erasmus education scheme and funding programmes for SMEs and research. Socialist MEP Paul Murphy was among those who voted against the proposed budget, also called the multi-annual financial framework, or MMF. â€Å“Iâ€â„¢m in favour of reducing the European budget in terms of cutting MEP wages and the expenses of the bureaucrats in the commission, but they were proposing cuts to investment in jobs. They wanted to make cuts of 70 per cent in funding to the globalisation adjustment fund that makes payments to workers who lose their jobs. These kind of austerity measures only serve to deepen the financial crisis,â€Â said Mr Murphy. European Parliament President Martin Schulz defended the vote, insisting that MEPs were likely to demand up to €16 billion extra to finance outstanding financial commitments for 2013, as part of a more long-term budget accord. Loss of MEP seat is â€Å“inevitableâ€Â The Minister for European Affairs, Lucinda Creighton, has said it is â€Å“highly unlikelyâ€Â that the Government would use its veto at European Council level to block moves that would see Ireland lose an MEP seat. Minister Creighton was speaking in Strasbourg where MEPs voted by a significant majority for changes that would see 12 member states, including Ireland, lose an MEP seat at the next European elections. The reductions are being made to facilitate the accession of Croatia to the EU in July. â€Å“It would be most unusual and highly unlikely that any government would veto a proposal that affects the European Parliament,â€Â she said, adding that it was â€Å“inevitableâ€Â that the number of representatives for each member state would get smaller.