Future EU budget (MFF)

The European Parliament today adopted a resolution outlining its position in response to the agreement at last month's EU summit by EU governments on Council's position on the next EU multiannual financial framework (2014-20). The Greens supported the resolution adopted today, which rejected the position adopted by Council, and stressed that the European Parliament must remain strong and defend a future-oriented EU budget. Commenting after the vote, Greens/EFA co-president Dany Cohn-Bendit said:

"The EP has today drawn its line in the sand in rejecting the unacceptable position taken by EU governments on the next EU multiannual financial framework. Parliament must now stick to its guns and insist that these bottom lines are delivered on. We cannot accept any agreement that fails to provide for true own resources, falls short in terms of overall ambition or that fails to dramatically shift the spending priorities under the draft financial framework away from backward-looking spending towards more future-oriented areas aimed at promoting the sustainable transformation of the European economy."

Greens/EFA co-president Rebecca Harms added:

"Parliament's mandate is to overcome narrow-minded national interests and to defend the principle that by working together in the EU we can achieve more. This concept, and the value-added that the EU budget brings, is all the more important now at a time when national exchequers are under pressure. Cutting the EU budget defies this logic. We need to invest in future-oriented areas, such as research and innovation, sustainable development and programmes that will give European youth a better prospect. We also need a more flexible budget that can respond to challenges faced by the EU as they arise.

"Finally, we need to end these Groundhog Day budget summits, where each EU national government haggles to defend its narrow national interest, resulting in a perpetual patchwork EU budget. Redressing this means introducing a true system of own resources. We already have immediately implementable means to realise this, such as through using part of the revenues from an EU financial transaction tax. The EP must fight to ensure this opportunity is not missed."