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THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT has approved the EU’s nearly one trillion euro budget for the next seven years.
The budget was approved by a large majority of 682 MEPs and will mark the first-ever trimmed-back, long-term budget for EU institutions to spend from the period 2014 to 2020.
While conservatives and the socialists united to pass the measure, the Greens and the radical left voted against.
“This is a great day for Europe,” European Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso said today.
“The European Parliament has given its final blessing to the European budget from 2014 until 2020, thus bringing successfully an end to long negotiations. Now, the Council can seal the deal shortly.”
Known as the Multi-annual Financial Framework (MFF), the budget provides for €908 billion in payments against €960 billion in funding commitments which is 3.7 per cent and 3.5 per cent less than in the previous 2007-2013 budget.
The budget is geared towards the EU’s overarching priorities to create sustainable growth, jobs and competitiveness.
Today’s vote marks the end of a battle that has gone back and forth between the European Commission, member states and MEPs in recent months.
Ireland’s presidency of the EU in the first half of this year saw significant progress, with an agreement reached by the parliament in July, but there have been further hurdles to clear in recent months.
While austerity-minded governments in countries like Britain, as well as the Commission, wanted to cut back on EU spending, MEPs from peripheral EU countries wanted more funding to boost jobs and growth.
The last step for the seven-year blueprint will be formal approval in the coming days by the European Council of member states.
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A great day for Europe? While Greece burns and unemployment remains high across the whole union, a bunch of powerless twits in Brussels secure another 7 years of gravy for unelected, faceless bureaucrats and it is heralded as a great day? As long as the inner circle is protected by the labour of the continent’s great unwashed I guess all is good in the eyes of our new, unofficial rulers. I’d usually be one to sneer at the EUSSR comments but this really does stink of some being more equal than others in this new surpranational empire.
Why do I get the feeling that this is all going to end in a terrible disaster and maybe even conflict within Europe once again? There are many people waking up to the uncomfortable fact that the EU is not only dictatorial in nature, but highly corrupt and alarmingly undemocratic – the EU project suffers from not having any real democratic legitimacy – without constitutional accountability, it is heading for trouble.
Unfortunately the EU leadership has successfully managed to avoid asking the people what they think or in the case of France and Holland in 2005, just ignoring the negative vote at their referendums.
Ireland was just told to vote again until it got it right.
Only 5-6% of the EU’s total budget is spent on administration – the remaining part spent outside of Brussels, back in the Member States such as on structural funding for disadvantaged regions, the Common Agriculture Policy, Erasmus, etc.
Have they ever had auditors sign off their accounts?
@Aunty.
A. No.
In fact, no matter what accountants they use – KPMG, PwC and so on, none of them has signed off on the annual accounts due to black holes in EU finances of several hundred million euros each year.
And it ain’t the EU taxpayer that’s benefiting, that’s for sure.
@Aunty, @Declan Conway,
The EU has long had the independent institution of the European Court of Auditors to ensure spending is going to where its going.
http://europa.eu/about-eu/institutions-bodies/court-auditors/
So the books have never been signed off properly, well well well
“With a press release that anyone who knows the first thing about accounting concepts like material error would find hilarious, the EU is claiming that failing to get their accounts past the auditors yet again is some kind of triumph. ”
http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-11-1332_en.htm?locale=en
Independent institution of the European Court of Auditors.
lol.
A body that has never explained why so many hundreds of millions go missing each EU parliament.
Didn’t they also refuse to publish a report in to corruption in the EU because it was so damning.
@Red_Stag1,
With 5% of the EU budget spent on administration, 95% is returned to Member States for uses across a range of funding instruments (agriculture, fisheries, Erasmus, regional cohesion, etc) – funding which is aimed for the benefit EU citizens.
Its therefore Member States themselves who handle and process the majority of the EU’s budget, since the funding is aimed farms, fishermen, students, etc) so when money does go missing, the fault generally rests with Member States and their systems of administration not the EU.
Which report on corruption do you mean?
The one that Gay Mitchell compiled that is locked away under Commission orders. Only the people who compiled it have access to it. It came up during the Presidency here.
@Red_Stag1,
You’re going to have to give me a news link to this as I am no familiar with it.
From looking at his MEP website, Mitchell is not a member of any European Committee on corruption or justice so I am not sure why he would compile a report on corruption.
Why be surprised, the people who engineered 2 world wars in Europe and who were the so-called “allies”, and won the war, are the crowd implementing their exploitative policies since the end of ww2. Of course there will be war, but not just in Europe, a world war.
Priority 1. Banks
Priority 2. Investors/Bondholders
Priority 3. Multinationals
Priority 4. Politically connected elites
Priority 5…………
Priority 543. The ordinary people of Europe.
@
The ordinary people of Europe :- Priority Not on the Agenda
How did our MEPs vote on this?
Probably a “yes” seeing how the party blocks broke down.
Yay we’re all saved now,oh wait…
Nearly 5% of the Annual spend of the EU goes missing and cannot be accounted for. The EU is a skimming operation.
@Red_Stag1 That sounds like a good number compared to what we have seen from the HSE and Gardai!
Most MEP’s are picked to run because they’ll be good little boys and girls who will collect their 200k a year and the dozens of expenses, have no trouble accepting payments to lobby or propose laws (the EU parl. has an incredible problem with this).
All they have to do in return is to promise to keep the EU train rolling towards a federal state and if that means rolin over the people of Europe then so be it. They can pretend that it has something to do with keeping peace, mumble WW2 and Europe’s destiny.
Every attempt to turn Europe in to one state has failed. This will be no different.
.
Every attempt to turn Europe in to one state has always been against the wishes of the people, the poor fools that get shot or rot in poverty and unemployment all across the no growth continent.
The EU show will go on and the plebs have no say either way.
Our MEP’s????
No, they are full puppets of EUSSR. They do not give a damn about the people of Ireland, they go to Strasbourg, take their orders, come back here and implement them.
Whenever I see that maoist Manuel Barrosso, I vomit. A marxist in his student days, now a full-on arrogant power-tripping commisaar. But then what do you expect, all these student anarchist types eventually become the suits they protest against in their bourgeois student tantrum fashion days.
Meanwhile the real workers have to contend with the criminal and destruction policies they implement.
Ta hell with the greens anyway. There answer to everything they don’t like is “tax it” the quicker there extinct the better!
Only one way to eradicate these lunatics is make sure they never get a vote again.
Let them make room for labour in hell.
The bubble gets bigger.
A self created bubble for the MEP’s where there loyalty to the EU above the people is assured by massive wages, expenses and pensions and if kicked out by the electorate in elections they’ll get other jobs in the Commission or the wider EU structure.
They can’t loose either way. When staunch and widely revered European federalists like Jurgen Habermas start describing the EU as being a post-democratic bureaucracy then you it must be mad.
Let me guess, France and Germany got everything they wanted and everyone else got shafted..
Oppressed not ordinary
Odd that they agreed a 58million shortfall?
Afaik, the EU cannot borrow, it must be granted funds from its members.
I suppose the 3% reduction in spending is a good step.
Lets hope they keep to it.
Of course this assumes there’ll still BE an EU in 2020!
With increasing resentment from a disenfranchised citizenry in not just Ireland but across Europe over the undemocratic, unaccountable nature of the EU, coupled with the hardship caused by the “austerity for some, gravy trains for others” policies and the failure to either deal with the still-mounting debt crisis, and the real problems caused by all this and the lack of support for any further social, economic and political integration, it’s debatable whether the EU will even survive that long… just wait till the next crisis hits.
In my opinion the EU project was a failure from the start because of the huge political, cultural and economic differences between the member states which is still the case today – in fact, even more so since the crisis began. It should have remained as the EEC – a trade body only without any of these unworkable political aspirations.
True democracy at work. Noone gets a vote on it.
The MEPs do.
And we vote for them.
As democratic as our own parliament…. little different.
Who elected Mick Barroso?
Parliament & commission.
Barroso was rubber stamped by the EU parl. Schultz and Rompoy were rubber stamped as well.
neo national socialists did
Barosso looks like he’s asking the waiter for the bill and then told him “Ireland is paying”
We get the usual howls from people who would scream about anything with the letters EU in it, but there’s a more fundamental question for me here.
We will elect a new set of MEPs next year who will last until 2019.
Does this mean that there will be an entire parliament that will go by without a vote on budgetary issues? When politicians hear about a democratic deficit in the EU, they might want to consider that very carefully.
@Chris Mansfield,
That won’t be the case when the next EU budget negotiations begin later in the decade.
The piece of legislation for the budget, and other policies, is passed between the institutions months in advance of the final vote.
The outgoing European Parliament of 2009 – 2014 have been debating and negotiating the 2014 – 2020 EU budget legislation for months, the same will then take place in around 2017/8 when the European Commission publishes the the 2021 – 2027 EU Budget legislation and the process starts all over again where the new European Parliament elected next year will be involved on the new EU budget negotiations.
Still, the effects of their vote won’t be evident when they run for re-election. It is peculiar that budgetary planning would be carried out on such a long-term plan.
The EU budget has to be agreed for a several year period due to the size of it, the number of funding instruments involved but also for Member State’s to know how much they will receive so they can prepare.
You wouldn’t be able to organise a party if didn’t know how much or when your wages will arrive.
Its taken so long for this agreement to be made, it would just not be possible if this was done on a yearly basis within a confined time frame.
Remember, there are the opinions of 28 Member State governments and 766 MEPs that the Commission has to balance between the negotiations – a tough job!
Fantastic news
For Europe possibly, for the people of Europe we will have to wait and see,./
Ha Ha Ha, turn off the lights
People always complain that the auditors won’t sign off on the EU budget. The EU is useful for things like cross border infrastructure on regional development to tie together the single market. In consultation with the member states the EU comes up with plans and then allocates the money to the member states to spend on the projects.
The EU isn’t actually spending the money it”s the member states. It isn’t always possible to verify that the money has been spent properly by the member states. Somehow this is the fault of the EU though.
and the gravy train continues for another 7 years for euro mps…
God bless our unelected leaders in Europe
Shitebags all of you. This is my journal http://youtu.be/WIhWgGjMg7M
Your not funny.
If people visit his Twitter account and report him for spam please.
It might encourage him to get the mental help that he obviously needs.
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