Budget, EU – Baltic States, Financial Services, Legislation, Markets and Companies

Taavi Roivas, vice chairman of the committee, said the European Commission's budget plan was a sensible compromise.

According to the plan put forward by the European Commission, cohesion support for Estonia would decrease due to the country's growing prosperity, but at the same time support for the farming sector would increase as would also opportunities to seek support for large projects.

According to Roivas, the budget plan can be regarded with cautious optimism as cohesion support for countries whose gross domestic product has risen above 75 percent of the EU average will decline by 24 percent instead of 45 percent as earlier expected and several other supports will make up for the decrease. On the whole EU support for Estonia in the next seven years will be roughly of the same size as previously.

"The decrease in cohesion support is due to Estonia's fast economic growth over the last seven years and our level of prosperity reaching 76 percent of the EU average. At the same time a considerably sharper fall was anticipated and the Commission's proposal is a sensible compromise," Roivas said, adding that the funds set apart for Estonia in the proposed EU budget would be the largest per capita among EU member states.

Roivas underlined at the meeting the need to observe principles of equality in the distribution of EU funds among member states and stressed the importance of the allocation of cohesion aid to ensure the equality of different regions. In his words, the distribution of agricultural subsidies should be more even.

Cretu also introduced the timetable for handling the new multiannual financial framework.