EU Governments, Parliament Fail to Strike Deal of 2015 Budget

World » EU | November 18, 2014, Tuesday // 12:11
Bulgaria: EU Governments, Parliament Fail to Strike Deal of 2015 Budget

The EU member states and the European Parliament have failed to strike a deal on the 2015 budget and talks will continue.

With the Monday night deadline behind them, the European Union's governments and lawmakers will have to try again to reach an agreement on next year’s budget.

While cost-conscious EU governments are ready to approve expenditure of EUR 140 B, a decrease of 3.3% on 2014, in a bid to to save money, the European Parliament is more generous, seeking an increase of 8% on this year’s outlays to EUR 146.4 B.

The debate is focused on billions of euroin funding for expanding EU programmes in the bloc’s less-developed states and supporting education, agriculture and scientific research.

"We haven't won the race against the clock today," AFP quoted Italian State Secretary for Economic Affairs, Enrico Zanetti, whose country holds the EU's rotating presidency, as saying.

The Commission will now present a new draft budget.If the two sides fail to find a compromise solution by 1 January 2015, the European Union will have run on “provisional twelfths”, i.e. 1/12 of the 2014 amount for each month of 2015 until an agreement is reached.

The European Parliament said in a statement it wants to reduce the growing pile of unpaid bills, while the EU governments’s proposal, “revealed on the very last day of the budget talks, only aggravates the payment crisis”.

While the European Parliament wants to use exceptional windfall revenues of EUR 5 B from fines to settle some of the most urgent unpaid bills, member states insist they would prefer to channel the extra income back into their national budgets. 

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Tags: European Union, EU, European parliament, budget, agreement

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