The European Parliament adopted the report on budgetary guidelines that highlights that EU Member States must not capped "artificially" the budget payments for 2013. In addition, the report underlines that next year's EU budget should focus on youth employment and small and medium- sized enterprises (SMEs).

The European Parliament wants to ensure that Member States do not put the European Commission in a position where it can no longer honour its contractual obligations, as they did in December last year. It therefore adopted the report on the budgetary guidelines which reflect MEPs' wishes and priorities for the EU's forthcoming 2013 budget. MEPs stress that the budget should be determined on the basis of technical criteria such as implementation figures, absorption forecasts and the level of outstanding commitments.

The Commission is currently preparing the draft for the 2013 EU budget. MEPs ask the Council on the budgetary guidelines report that if the Council continues to cut payments artificially during this year's budget procedure, it should clearly and publicly identify and justify which of the EU's political priorities or projects it believes could be delayed or dropped altogether.

On the other hand, MEPs underline that next year's EU budget should focus on youth employment and small and medium- sized enterprises (SMEs). According to MEPs, promoting growth and job creation requires specific actions and enhanced budgetary efforts to nurture competitiveness and innovation and offer support to SMEs.