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The EU’s budget for 2015 was proposed by the Commission last month but it has to be approved by the Council of Ministers and the European Parliament. In a sign of how tough the coming negotiations are likely to be, member states’ ambassadors to the EU agreed on 15 July to seek cuts of €2.1 billion to the Commission’s proposal, which is bound to be unacceptable to the Parliament.
MEPs can propose amendments to the proposal and have a deadline of 4 September to do so if acting as individuals, or until 11 September if acting as a political group. The Parliament’s budgets committee must then vote on its version of the proposed budget by 7 October.
The Council of Ministers will formally adopt its position on the 2015 budget early in September, by written procedure, endorsing the ambassadors’ agreement. The Parliament will set its position with a vote in plenary scheduled for 22 October. The main negotiations between Italy – which holds the presidency of the Council – and senior MEPs can then take place between 28 October and 17 November, the deadline for a deal.
The Commission had in June proposed a budget for 2015 that had €142.1bn in payment appropriations. Member states’ ambassadors to the EU want to cut this to €140.0bn, which, according to figures provided by the Council of Ministers, would be 3.3% more than in the current annual budget (not factoring in adjustments made to date through amending budgets).
The member states are also seeking to cut the Commission’s proposal for commitment appropriations – the amount that is available for contracts during the year – by €522 million, to €145.08bn. The secretariat of the Council of Ministers put out a press release saying that the Council had increased by €2.8bn the allocation for research, innovation and education.
On July 9th, the college of European commissioners adopted the fourth amendment to the annual budget for 2014, which proposes adjustments based on revised estimates of duties and levies that go directly into the EU budget (known as ‘own resources’) and on updates to revenue from competition fines. Italy, for example, is now projected to pay almost €500m less into the EU budget than previously foreseen. France (€267m) and Belgium (€265m) will also pay less. The amendment also revises the UK’s budget rebates for 2013, 2011 and 2010, increasing the total by €567m in the UK’s favour.
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