Committee approves 2014-2015 budgets

The European Parliament’s Budgets Committee has approved the draft budget for 2015 and the top-up of the 2014 budget, opening the way to their adoption at the plenary session.

The draft foresees €145.32bn in commitments and €141.21bn in payments for 2015, and an extra €4.25bn to settle outstanding bills in 2014.

The Parliament’s priorities have been: securing enough money to pay the most urgent pending bills received from economic partners in the member states; to have a concrete plan to wind down the accumulated pile of invoices that reached €23.4bn by the beginning of 2014; and to secure financing of areas that European institutions prioritised in their political commitments.

The Parliament wanted all extra revenues from fines against companies breaching competition law to be used to lower the backlog.

“Thanks to the Parliament’s insistence, the Council had to agree to devote a part of the revenues stemming from fines to pay most urgent bills, thus, an amount of €3.53bn will decrease the backlog of outstanding payments,” said Monika Hohlmeier, rapporteur for the budget of 2015.

The Parliament fully reversed €500m of the Council’s cuts, mostly affecting competitiveness, citizenship and external action. It also negotiated a further €45m for the EU research and development programme Horizon 2020 and an extra €16m for the student exchange programme Erasmus+. For foreign policy, the budget was increased by €32m. Banking supervisory agencies and Frontex also received more funding.