Parliament and Council reach agreement on budget

The EU’s budget for 2014 has been agreed by the Council of the European Union and the European Parliament in meetings in Brussels.

The total agreed amount for the budget is €142.6bn in commitments and €135.5bn in payments. Vice-Minister for Finance of Lithuania and President of the Council, Algimantas Rimkunas said: “I believe that today’s agreement on the 2014 EU budget is a good start for the new programming period.

“I’m glad that we could reach an agreement with the 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.”

As the first budget agreed under the Multiannual Financial Framework for 2014-2020, the negotiators sought to meet three objectives, namely the protection of member state’s budgets from undue financial burden; providing the Union with the ability to cope with unforeseen situations; and ensuring that money is spent on the most urgent political priorities.

Overall the amount agreed is markedly lower than 2013’s budget. Payments have declined by 9.4%, while commitments have fallen by 9.5% over the previous budget.