Fighting for Europe’s citizens in upcoming budget battle

Negotiations for the EU's next multiannual budget framework are heating up: on Wednesday 13 March, MEPs will vote on the mandate for their negotiation team, headed by EPP Group member Reimer Böge, allowing them to start detailed discussions with the EU Council to determine the priorities, conditions and maximum ceilings for the EU budget until 2020. Although the EU budget is determined on an annual basis, just like national ones, the seven-year Multiannual Financial Framework - known to Brussels insiders as 'MFF' - sets the maximum amount to be spent on EU projects. Because it runs over 7 years, the MFF budget framework enables local and regional communities, research institutes and companies to apply for EU funding to cover more than just one year.

The opening shot to the upcoming negotiations has been fired by the EU's Heads of Government, who met in the European Council on 7 and 8 March to set out their priorities for the EU’s long-term financial planning.

The real race is only about to begin, however, as it is the European Parliament which determines the content of the MFF together with the EU Council, i.e. national ministers under the leadership of the Irish EU presidency.

The European Council, in its non-binding proposal, asked to cap EU financial planning ('commitments') at 960 billion Euros for the whole period from 2014 to 2020. Out of this amount, only 908 billion Euros are to be actually spent on projects.

EPP Group's position for upcoming negotiations on MFF

Led by the EPP Group, MEPs will now set out to improve the proposal put forward by the Heads of Government and make sure it is more in line with EU priorities and citizens’ needs.

The draft mandate for its negotiating team, tabled by Reimer Böge, which will be put to the vote in plenary, foresees a number of points to make sure the EU budget becomes more transparent and is able to make a difference in the current crisis, while contributing to economic growth.

Flexibility

Firstly, it calls for the budget to become more flexible. Unspent funds should be transferred between spending categories and moved to the following year if necessary. The advantage: the EU can react quicker to unforeseen events and does not risk running a deficit.

Revision clause

The same goes for the second point, a compulsory and comprehensive revision clause. Rather than being set in stone for the total duration of seven years, the budget ceilings must be adjusted if new political challenges arise. After all, who can say now what will happen in those seven years?

Own resources

A third point identified by Parliament’s negotiators is the need for an "agreement on an in-depth reform of the own-resources system", in order to facilitate financial planning while reducing the burden on national budgets.

Transparency & democracy

Finally, MEPs want all EU spending to fall under the MFF framework (which is not the case at the moment, with several large expenditure blocks being exempt), to make it more transparent and democratic.

Call for an amended current budget without shortfall

Before negotiations can start, however, the draft mandate calls for the Commission to come forward with a proposal to cover the shortfall in the current budget which arose due to national finance ministers refusing to reimburse recipients of EU projects for their expenses even though they had earlier promised to do so. Parliament, the draft mandate says, will not conclude the MFF negotiations "before the final adoption by Council and Parliament of this amending budget".

Next steps

MEPs will vote on Reimer Böge's draft mandate for the Parliaments negotiation team in its plenary session on 13 March.

Flexibility, transparency, accountability, sustainability and responsible budgeting are the keywords guiding parliament’s negotiators in what might yet prove to be difficult political talks. One thing is for sure though: Europe’s citizens will be better off if parliament gets its way.