Mr. Tony Murphy:

Yes. If we are talking about Ukraine, a decision will be made in the next few days and approximately another €18 billion will be loaned to that country to help with its current situation. As the Chair said, the current risk specifically concerns Ukraine being unable to repay its loans and this amounts to approximately €6.87 billion. This is one risk. Regarding the others, those are basically guaranteed by the member states. This is the bottom line. If the member states cannot pay this money, then there will be a huge problem for everybody. As the Chair said as well, we are all going to pay in proportion. It is something like our proportion of the GNI calculation, or whatever the context might be. We will all account for guaranteeing a certain percentage of the total. Despite all the problems referred to by the Chair and the issues we will have in future, with inflation and the cost of energy, etc., I hope member states will be solid enough and be able to ensure these loans do not materialise as real liabilities.

Turning to the asylum issue, the Chair is again right. There is the Asylum and Migration Integration Fund. We also have all these other funds coming from the EU budget. Every member state has a share of these funds to contribute as well. Basically, the EU is paying and this is done on a proportionate basis by member states. We highlight these figures just to show the risk exists. It should not be overstated. The banks are giving these loans because they think there is not really a risk of non-repayment. This is the hope and comfort we have. The figures are, however, becoming very large, as the Chair said. We have the SURE programme, which amounts to almost €100 billion. We also have the NGEU, and approximately half the €650 billion is in loans. This is a lot of money when we add it all up.

The other side of the coin is how effective the Commission will be in introducing these other own-resource revenue generating measures, such as the plastics tax, carbon tax, etc. The idea in this regard is that these initiatives will help to offset the liabilities as well, rather than going to the member states and asking them for a specific increase in contributions. Even though these measures are indirect contributions, there is always pressure for the member states not to be seen to have to pay more for being a member.

This is why we mentioned the budget galaxy concept earlier. This is also a way of keeping different areas outside the EU budget, even though the member states are all funding these things. They are not, however, parts of the EU budget. This is why we are looking at this as an audit that will be published. We call it the budget galaxy because we have the main EU budget and then we have all these satellites around it, which are ad hocarrangements involving all the member states or a selection of member states. If we were to look at the real cost of all these programmes for the member states, it would be necessary to add all these costs up. It is a complex set-up and environment.