The Multiannual Financial Framework 2014-2020: A budget for Europe 2020
The European Commission presented its proposal for the multiannual financial framework (MFF) 2014-2020. This marks the beginning of negotiations between the European Parliament and the Council of the EU (the member states), which have to agree on the principles, priorities and concrete numbers until the autumn of 2012. This will be one of the hottest issues next year, in the context of the economic challenges, the Union is facing, and the serious differences between the positions of Parliament and Council on key issues. In general, Parliament calls for a budget increase to meet the commitments of the Union under the Europe 2020 strategy. The Commission proposal expresses the same spirit. Member States, however, insist EU budget to reflect the austerity measures, implemented at national level, and even to be frozen until 2020. euinside will follow the progress of negotiations and will present in detail both the Commission's proposal and the positions of Parliament and Council, as we did in terms of the current MFF 2007-2013.

All member states, practically with no exclusions, have mentioned the refugee problem as a large budget expense. European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker (Luxembourg, EPP) said so to MEPs this week, stating before that he was surprised by this. In September, ministers of finance of the ...

The European Commission will today (12 November) propose amendments to the own resources regulation in an attempt to solve the problem that emerged during the October European Council with the corrections of some member states' contributions to the common EU budget. In the end of each year, the ...

With 506 votes "for", 161 "against" and 23 abstentions the European Parliament showed its teeth on March 13th by rejecting the deal for the multiannual budget of the Community for the period 2014-2020. This move was expected as the Europarliament was threatening with a veto ever since the begin ...

A lot of time passed since the first special EU summit dedicated on the multiannual financial framework for the period 2014-2020. In the mean time it became clear that the eurozone will not have a common budget or at least not in a foreseeable future; there will be a single supervisory mechanis ...

In the very beginning of the negotiations on the multiannual financial framework (MFF) of the EU for the period 2014-2020, the most controversial moment among the member states was where the negotiations should start from - top-down (meaning from the total amount of the budget first and then the ...

Do you remember the battle for the 7-year European budget for the 2014-2020 period? How British Prime Minister David Cameron was proud of the fact that he won the fight for the first real lowering of the European budget, despite the EU had expanded with one more member? He even went as ...

After the end of the lethally dangerous stage of the eurozone crisis, it was rather an exception the summits of the leaders of the EU member states not to be accompanied by a British scandal. The situation has fiercely deteriorated around the European elections and the new procedure for election ...

Unlike previous negotiations on the seven-year financial framework of the European Union, this time there was no thrill, no matter that the last summit continued a little over 24 hours. Although, at first glance, many similarities can be seen with previous negotiations, there are many big and e ...

The failure of the special EU summit for Budget 2014-2020 is not simply a failure of the EU leaders to agree about money. It is about something much deeper that has been emerging clearer for quite some time - the internal EU conflict. The conflict between the EU of the institutions and the EU of ...

On November 5th, European Council President Herman Van Rompuy will begin a tour in the EU member states for last consultations on the national positions before a key and extraordinary EU summit on November 22-23, dedicated entirely on the negotiations on EU Budget 2014-2020, at the moment entire ...