|
|
Budget Commissioner Janusz Lewandowski said: "After over 16 hours of negotiations we have reached an agreement on the EU budget for 2014. I am pleased that the deal reached between the European Parliament and the Council provides much needed investment opportunities to Europe's businesses, scientists, towns, regions and students at a time when investing is much needed.
"I can only commend the European Parliament, the Lithuanian Presidency of the Council and behind it Europe's Member States for the spirit of cooperation that prevailed throughout this negotiating process as well as for the compromises that they have been willing to make in order not to fail all those across Europe who await EU funding.
"Tonight's agreement also constitutes a crucial step in the direction of the adoption of the next Multiannual Financial Framework (the 2014-2020 MFF)."
"I believe that today's agreement on the 2014 EU budget is a good start for the new programming period", said Vice-Minister for Finance of Lithuania and President of the Council Algimantas Rimkunas. "I'm glad that we could reach an agreement with the European Parliament on the financing of priority areas such as growth, employment, innovation and humanitarian aid. We also agreed to reinforce the financing on migration, FRONTEX, the European Asylum Support Office, Europol and the three supervisory authorities which are important for the proper implementation of the Economic and Monetary Union."
Ms Anne Jensen (ALDE, DK), who is steering the 2014 budget through Parliament, labels the outcome as “an austerity budget” given that it is almost 6 per cent down on this year. “But I am glad we managed to secure more funds for growth policies for research, education and innovation and for humanitarian aid in the Middle East”, she added. “Parliament has taken its responsibility by accepting a lower budget. But we managed to get the priorities right and prevent the EU from starting 2014, the first year under the new Multi-annual Financial Framework, in the red”, said Budgets Committee Chair Alain Lamassoure (EPP, FR), welcoming he outcome.
Background
The deal sees an overall level of commitments of €142.6 billion and of payments of €135.5 billion. It also includes an agreement on various pending amending budgets for 2013 (draft amending budgets 8 and 9, respectively €3.9 billion to pay claims in Cohesion Policy and €400 million to compensate regions affected by violent floods last spring.
Ahead of the negotiations
The Commission's original proposal for the 2014 budget (incl. amending letters no. 1 and 2) amounted to: €142.6 billion in commitments and €136.1 billion in payments. The Council's position on the 2014 budget was: €142.2 billion in commitments and €135 billion in payments. The European Parliament's position was: €143.1 billion in commitments and €136.4 billion.
Next steps
The institutions reached a political agreement today. Both the European Parliament and Council must still adopt it formally.