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EU Budget after 2019: funding more with less

Eugene Eteris, RSU/BC, Riga, 04.07.2017.Print version
The Commission published a reflection paper on the future of EU finances in which it describes possible options to finance “common needs”. This is fifth and final paper in the series of debate on EU budget’s future; debates started in March this year with the Commission’s White Paper on the Future of Europe. The reflection paper maps out possible budgetary implications of the choices the EU states would make.

As European member states decide the EU’s future, the Commission needs a budget that is fit for financing common development issues with adequate efficiency.

 

Commissioner Günther H. Oettinger, in charge of budget and human resources, argued that in order to tackle new challenges, the member states need sufficient European budget. “We can either spend less or find new revenues, he underlined and added that “whatever we do, each Euro invested from the EU budget must add value and have a positive impact on people's daily lives”.

 

Regional Policy Commissioner Corina Creţu that while making a new EU budget, “we have to make it simpler and more flexible with ambition and imagination to use this powerful tool for the EU to grow faster, ever closer, and leave no one behind in this globalised economy”.

 

Already in September 2015, Jean-Claude Juncker said that “We need a budget to achieve our aims. The budget for us is therefore not an accounting tool, but a means to achieve our political goals.” 


The EU budget faces tough challenges

The EU is expected to play a bigger role in new policy areas like migration, internal and external security or defence. Besides, the EU should also preserve its leading role on the global stage, as a major humanitarian and development aid donor and as a leader of the fight against climate change. That must be achieved with an EU budget that will only get smaller following the Brexit, i.e. departure of the United Kingdom from the EU.

 

Present reflection paper looks at this challenge and puts the key elements for discussion on the table, structured around the five scenarios of the White Paper: will the EU simply carry on, do less together, move ahead at different levels of intensity, do less but more efficiently or do much more together?

 

Each of these illustrative scenarios for the EU’s future would have different consequences: both in terms of how much to spend for what purpose, and on where the money could come from. Options range from reducing spending for existing policies to increasing revenues.

 

In addition, the reflection paper sets out the basic features of the EU budget and charts the principal trends and developments in key policy areas like cohesion and agriculture. It also addresses over-arching issues like the added value of EU funding or the articulation between EU funding and structural reforms in the EU member states.

 

Conclusion. The reflection process initiated by the White Paper and built on by the series of reflection papers will feed into preparing the proposal for the next multiannual financial framework for the EU-27, which the Commission intends to present in mid-2018.

 

The multiannual financial framework lays down the maximum annual amounts which the EU may spend each year in different policy fields over a period of at least 5 years. The current multiannual financial framework covers the period from 2014 to 2020. Each annual budget must comply with this framework.

 

In order to sustain and further stimulate the debate on the issues raised in the reflection paper, a number of public events will take place in the coming months, such as the annual 'Budget focused on Results' conference organised by the Commission on 25 September 2017.

 

Reflection paper of the future of EU finances, see on:

https://ec.europa.eu/commission/sites/beta-political/files/reflection-paper-eu-finances_en.pdf.

 

More information on the EU budget: = White Paper on the Future of Europe; = Reflection paper on the social dimension of Europe (26 April 2017); = Reflection paper harnessing globalisation (10 May 2017); = Reflection paper deepening the Economic and Monetary Union (31 May 2017), on the basis of the Five Presidents' Report of June 2015; = Reflection paper the future of European defence (7 June 2017); - Reflection paper the future of EU finances (28 June 2017); = "Future financing of the EU", final report of the High Level Group chaired by Mario Monti; = Multiannual Financial Framework (2014-2020); = Future of EU finances: Five Scenarios; = Future of EU finances: Facts and Figures;

Reference: http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-17-1795_en.htm?locale=en.

Latvian version: http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-17-1795_lv.htm







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