The EC spokesperson for the Commissioner for Budget and Financial Planning, Dalia Grybauskaitė, answered a series of questions asked by HotNews.ro about the effects the international financial crisis will have of the EU budget. "Unless this financial framework is modified, the EU budget will be executed as foreseen until 2013, without any reduction notably for the cohesion instruments", said the official.

Q: The most of the EU budget (69% in 2007) revenues come from the member states contributions - a percentage applied to MS gross national income. What is the percentage for 2009, 2010, 2011?

A: Revenue from the EU budget includes:

- traditional own resources (16% of revenue in the preliminary draft budget for 2009 - PDB 2009) ;

- the VAT-based own resource (17% of revenue in the PDB 2009) ;

- the GNI-based own resource (66% of revenue in the PDB 2009) ;

- and other revenue (1% of revenue in the PDB 2009).

Q: Member States' contributions include both the VAT-based and GNI-based own resources (i.e. around 83% of total EU budget revenue).

A: The GNI-based own resource represents around 2/3 of EU budget revenue. The percentage applied to Member States' GNI for the purpose of this resource is 0.59% in the PDB 2009. The percentages for 2010 & 2011 are yet unknown because (a) the actual size of the budget is unknown and (b) the expected revenue from the other sources is also unknown (since the GNI-based own resource is calculated as a residual).

However, the maximum authorized total size of the EU budget until 2013 is already established in the financial framework (as available on page 10 of the following document:

http://eur-ex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=COM:2008:0152:FIN:EN:PDF).

The maximum amounts (0.97% of EU GNI in 20