2023-11-11 05:58:18
Negotiators from the European Parliament and the EU member states have agreed on an EU budget for 2024, as was announced on Saturday night. Accordingly, the EU can make commitments worth 189.4 billion euros and pay out up to 142.6 billion euros. State Secretary Florian Tursky (ÖVP), who sat at the negotiating table for Austria, sees this as “a balanced middle path between thrift and flexibility for the unforeseen.”
As the Council writes in its release, this leaves the EU with a margin of 360 million euros that is available to respond to unforeseen needs.
According to Tursky, the 2024 budget increased funding for programs such as Erasmus+ and Horizon. To achieve this, cuts were made in projects such as the ITER nuclear test reactor. The State Secretary also assesses positively that additional personnel costs requested by Parliament would have been reduced by two thirds.
A sticking point in the negotiations was Parliament’s request to link discussions on the 2024 budget with those on the current Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF 2021-2027), which the Council rejected. The MFF will be discussed at a meeting of heads of state and government in December.
The EU Commission’s proposal included 189.3 billion euros in commitments and 143.1 billion euros in payments. With these figures, the Brussels authority was between the ideas of Parliament and those of the Council, the institution of the EU states. The Council called for €187 billion in commitments and €141 billion in payments.
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