S&D MEPs have welcomed the adoption this morning by the European Council of the revision of the Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF), which sets the framework and spending ceilings for the EU’s annual budget. They also called for serious discussions to now begin on how to fund the EU budget after 2020.
S&D vice-president Isabelle Thomas MEP, co-author of the Parliament’s report on the MFF revision, said:
"Finally! The Council has adopted the revision of the MFF for 2014-2020. However, this decision has taken far too long - at the Parliament's request, the Commission proposed this revision in September last year and the Parliament voted on it in April. It has been clear for years that the MFF is both undersized and inadequate to tackle the major political challenges that Europe is facing. Neither migration, lack of investment, youth unemployment nor security issues had been seriously taken into account in this MFF. The result? Cutting budgets in areas as essential as research or young people. On this point, the S&D Group has fought hard against the Council to get the Youth Guarantee back into the EU budget.
“Overall this revision is a success even if the overall amount of six billion is still insufficient. This result shows that the Brexit negotiations are not an obstacle for the Union to move forward, particularly on budget issues. We now need to open the discussion on how we fund the EU in the future. We need to learn from this period and make sure that we have a budget that is both large enough, flexible enough and funded with its own resources, to compensate for struggling national budgets."
Eider Gardiazábal Rubial, S&D Group spokesperson for the EU budget, said:
“Over the last five years, national governments have given the EU an ever greater number of tasks. Despite this they have consistently failed to give the EU increased means to achieve these. With the adoption of this decision today, the Council seems to finally understand that a well-funded EU budget is essential for a successful Europe.
“We now need to talk about the elephant in the room – how we are going to make up the shortfall in the EU budget after the UK leaves. We need to be proactive to ensure that we have the budget that Europe needs to boost growth and tackle the many challenges we face.”
