Agreement reached on Budget 2014
They negotiated through the night, and finally European Parliament and Council managed to strike a deal on the EU budget for 2014. The deal also includes provision for remedying payments shortfalls in the current fiscal year.
MEPs were able to ensure that victims of the catastrophic flooding and drought in 2013 will be compensated. They also ensured that their own priorities for 2014 in areas such as employment, research and innovation, border management and humanitarian aid were also taken on board.
The details: in payments, EUR 500 million were added to the 2014 budget which bring the total compared to the initial Council position to EUR 135.5 billion.
Commitments were set at EUR 142.6 billion, which is in line with the Commission’s budget proposal.
The outcome of the negotiations is seen as important also with a view to approval of the EU’s long-term budget 2014-2020, which is still pending.
All in all, this is clearly still an austerity budget, as the total figure is nearly 6 per cent down on this year.
But it also allows money to be spent on countering the sky-rocketing youth unemployment across the EU.areas aiming to boost economic growth - including such areas as research (the Horizon 2020 programme), small- and medium sized enterprises (COSME) and education (Erasmus+) which will also increase substantially as compared to the Council’s proposal.
Next step? The Multi-annual Financial Framework (MFF) for 2014-2020.
The MFF could be approved by the Parliament on Tuesday 19 November, and the 2014 budget on Wednesday 20 November.
