Ms Jennifer Brown:

There is no specificity for the revenue coming into the budget. The budget must always be in balance and the expenditure must be balanced by the revenue calls on the member states. We do not make a link, however, between one policy and one set of money coming in. Each is its own pool and they must balance. It is impossible to say that an extra euro spent by one member state will come back in a particular way.

The ultimate question, now that the proposals from the Commission are on the table, is how they will be taken forward in the negotiations to come. We hope those negotiations might conclude before the summit of the European leaders in May of next year, so that this project can go forward bringing the added value that we want to bring to the Union and the beneficiaries in the member states, and that we do not repeat what happened the previous time when there was a very long lead-in and it led to a loss of a year, effectively, in implementation and progress.