Committee on Budgets vote on amendments to Budget 2007

Brussels, 12 October 2006: The Committee on Budgets completed its first reading vote on amendments to the 2007 EU budget during its meeting on Tuesday 10 October.

Amongst the highlights of the vote on the external section of the budget (Heading 4) was the adoption of a set of benchmarks for allocating 20% of EC aid to basic and secondary education and basic health in the budget lines for co-operation with developing countries in all geographic regions. The benchmarks, which had been proposed by the Committee on Development, were themselves amended from the ones which had been adopted on Monday 4 September in order to bring them into line with the benchmarks included in the recently agreed Development Cooperation Instrument (DCI).

Other highlights of the vote included:

• An overall increase of EUR 30,000,000 over the level of the European Commission's preliminary draft budget (PDB) for co-operation with Asia.
• An increase of EUR 653,000 over the level of the PDB 2007 for non-state actors in development.
• A separate budget line for local authorities in development endowed with EUR 2,000,000.
• Splitting the proposed budget line for human and social development into four separate budget lines: education, health, gender and other aspects of human and social development; and increasing the overall amount available for these budget lines by EUR 27,555,000 over the level of the PDB 2007.

The European Parliament will carry out its first reading of the 2007 EU budget during its next plenary session 23 - 26 October in Strasbourg.

For more information about the results of the vote in the Committee on Budgets, please contact This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .