The European Parliament has rejected the agreement on the multiannual EU budget 2014-2020 reached by the heads of state and government last February 8th. There were 506 votes against, 161 in favor and 23 abstentions. Strasbourg believes that the text "cannot be accepted without certain fundamental conditions being met".
In its resolution, the European Parliament does not ask to increase the figures of the budget agreement – 960 billion in commitments and 908,4 billion in terms of payments for the seven years -, but to introduce a number of clauses which would change the management methods, possibly also allowing an adjustment of the total amount with new additional resources, if necessary, around the middle of the programming period. Furthermore, according to Strasbourg, any decision to modify the budget should be taken by the European Council by qualified majority and not unanimously.
The European Parliament has also asked for a flexibility clause to be inserted which allows unspent funds to be transferred from one year to another and from one category of expenditure to another. Another important point is the clear rejection of the gap between commitments and payments (proposed by the European Council to please Great Britain), with a difference of over 40 billion euros which – according to the European Parliament – would put the EU budget in a "deficit" situation programmed” (funds allocated for expenditure programs which, once implemented, cannot be fully paid), with the consequence of deferring the outstanding debt of the previous year to the following year.
The fourth condition set by the European Parliament is that the heads of government consider the Commission's proposal to replace a large part of the Member States' contributions to the EU budget with "own resources", such as the tax on financial transactions or a tax on emissions greenhouse effect, the proceeds of which, at least in part, would go directly into Brussels' coffers.
The president of the European Parliament, Martin Schulz, will bring the resolution to tomorrow's EU summit in Brussels to illustrate it to the heads of state and government. At that point, negotiations will begin to reach a compromise. The negotiation promises to be complex, above all due to the reluctance of the member states to recognize the new powers claimed by the European Parliament.
