Compromise in Brussels: the EU budget for billions is standing

The European Parliament and the EU states have agreed on the EU budget for the next seven years. It amounts to 1,074 billion euros. This also paves the way for further corona aid.

In the dispute over the structure of the EU’s long-term budget, negotiators from the European Parliament and the Member States have reached a compromise. Among other things, the agreement stipulates that selected EU programs on topics such as research, health, youth and education will be provided with additional funds, as confirmed by MEPs and the German Presidency of the Council of the EU. .

Parliament negotiates additional funds

According to their account, MEPs negotiated a total of € 16 billion more for their concerns than what member state governments actually wanted to provide. The current German presidency of the Council of the EU expects around 12.5 billion euros to be fresh money. It is said to come largely from the revenue from EU competition sanctions that have so far returned to Member States.

The agreement is one of the preconditions for the continuation of preparations for the planned EU Crown aid of € 750 billion. They need to be made available in addition to the nearly € 1.1 trillion for the multiannual financial framework for the years 2021 to 2027. The negotiators of the Member States and Parliament have been negotiating the budget since September.

How do Poland and Hungary react?

It is now looking forward to whether all EU states will accept the additional billions of spending. Hungary and Poland had recently threatened to block important EU decisions on the EU budget in the long term if new sanctions were introduced for violations of the rule of law. To this end, negotiators last week negotiated a compromise which was rejected in Hungary and Poland.

The new sanctioning mechanism foresees that, for the first time in the history of the European Union, EU funds could be cut on a large scale due to violations of the rule of law. In particular, this should be the case, for example, if in the beneficiary country the courts responsible for any reviews of the allocation of funds cannot act completely independently. How to resolve the conflict with Hungary and Poland is open. In both countries, the European Commission, responsible for complying with EU law, has long criticized the fact that politics has too much influence on the courts. The criticism of this is categorically rejected by the Warsaw and Budapest governments.