EU finally gets its budget

Published on 16 December 2010 at 14:20

“When a football match finishes in a draw, both teams invariably wonder if they were closer to victory or defeat (and vice versa).” La Libre Belgiquereports that this was the prevailing sentiment in Strasbourg on Wednesday, following the European parliament's approval of the 2011 EU budget, which was passed by 508 votes to 141 with 19 abstentions.

According to the daily, on 9 December MEPs and EU member states had failed to reach agreement, because “MEPs felt they had not been given sufficient say on the EU’s 2014-2020 Financial Perspectives and the question of the EU raising its own finances.” However, if the Commission had not presented a revised budget, “the new European External Action Service and European system of financial supervisors (ESFS) would have begun 2011 without a penny.” And certain European politicians would have been reduced to a diet of bread and water.

In a vote that “acknowledged member states’ arguments on the need to reduce EU spending in the current context of austerity, the parliament accepted a limited budgetary increase of 2.91% for 2010, whereas in October it had voted for a 5.9% rise,” notes the Brussels daily. “In 2011, spending will be capped at 126.5 billion euros, for 141.8 billion euros of commitment appropriations. In exchange parliament obtained a pledge from the Commission that it will present proposals on the EU raising its own finances in June of that year, within the framework of negotiations on the EU’s Financial Perspectives.”

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