MEPs were disappointed that no deal had been struck with the Council on topping up the EU’s 2014 budget and a new budget for 2015.
MEPs urged EU member states to muster the political will to tackle the ever-growing pile of unpaid bills for 2014. Talks will resume after a new draft budget is presented on 28 November.
ˮWe cannot understand how the Council can have spent so much more time on dealing with its own problem [i.e. redistributing member states’ GNI-based contributions] than on delivering a budget for the EU as a wholeˮ, said 2014 budget rapporteur Gérard Deprez (ALDE, BE), reiterating that ˮWe have an obligation to agree on a good budget for 2014 and 2015".
MEPs again insisted on the need to establish clearly the amount of bills remaining unpaid at the end of 2014 before moving on to discuss the budget for 2015.
Pay what’s owed
ˮOur proposal is easy to understand: we have to pay what we owe. We cannot delay payments to citizens, organisations, students (..) More than €28 billion in outstanding bills is awfulˮ, said Eider Gardiazábal Rubial (S&D, ES), one of the rapporteurs for the EU's 2015 budget.
“Parliament is ready to consider any proposal to solve the problem of unpaid bills. What we need from the Council is the political will to do it", she added.
To solve the issue in the longer term, MEPs asked the Commission to present a plan gradually to reduce the sum of unpaid bills, which grew from €5 billion in 2010 to around €28 billion by the end of 2014.
Full press release
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