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(BRUSSELS) – The EU institutions reached provisional agreement in the early hours of Saturday on the 2018 EU budget, with boosts for research, fighting youth unemployment and education, but cuts to funding for Turkey.
The negotiators from the European Parliament and the Council reached a deal on preliminary figures of EUR 160.1 billion in commitments (money that can be agreed in contracts in a given year) and EUR 144.7 billion in payment credits (money that will be paid out).
The biggest part of the EU budget will go to stimulate the creation of jobs, especially for young people, and to boost growth, strategic investments and convergence. The EU will also continue supporting the efforts to effectively deal with the migration challenge, both inside and outside of the EU.
Key key features include:
- Nearly half of the funds – 77.5 billion in commitments will go to making our economy stronger, our universities more competitive, our companies better equipped to compete on the global market place. For instance, 2 billion will go to the European Fund for Strategic Investments (EFSI), 354 million will support small and medium-sized companies (Competitiveness of Small and Medium-sized Enterprises, COSME programme) and 11.2 billion will go to Horizon 2020, the EU research and innovation funding programme. A total of 55.5 billion will go to boosting growth, job creation and fostering convergence in all Member States and regions via the European Structural and Investment Funds (ESI Funds).
- Young people will get more support and better opportunities to find jobs thanks to 350 million for the Youth Employment Initiative, a key action which seeks to address the challenge of youth unemployment in our Member States.
- Support to European farmers amounts to 59 billion.
- Further to the launch of the European Defence Fund, 40 million is budgeted to fund collaborative research in innovative defence technologies and products. With 25 million already allocated in 2017, the total EU budget devoted to defence research until 2019 amounts to 90 million.
- Nearly 4.1 billion will be dedicated to managing migration and tackling security challenges. With the bulk of funding already front-loaded, the total for these policy areas will amount to 22 billion in the 2015-2018 period.
After Council has formally adopted the compromise, it will be voted in plenary in the European Parliament (on 30 November in Brussels) and signed into law by its President.
Given the need to manage multi-annual actions (e.g. financing a research project lasting 2-3 years), the EU budget distinguishes between commitment appropriations (the cost of all legal obligations contracted during the current financial year, possibly bearing consequences in the following years) and payment appropriations (money actually paid out during the current year, possibly to implement commitments entered into in previous years).
