MFF/future EU budget

The final agreement on the EU's multiannual financial framework (2014-20) was confirmed by the European Parliament in a vote today: the first time the EP has had a co-deciding role on the EU's budgetary framework. The Greens voted against the final outcome due to the overall level of ambition and the failure of the annexed declarations to deliver any binding provisions on the issues of own resources, a review clause and budgetary flexibility. Commenting after the vote, Greens/EFA co-president Dany Cohn-Bendit said: "While the low overall ambition of the EU's future budgetary framework was already known, this final deal leaves little or no scope for redressing this. The EU will be stuck with a budget with no vision for the coming seven years. The annexed declarations on the key outstanding issues - own resources, flexibility and a budget review - are non-binding and aspirational. As such, there is little or no guarantee of them actually yielding any concrete outcome. This is no 'compensation' for the Parliament accepting the massively scaled-down ambition of the overall MFF." Green budgetary spokesperson Helga Trüpel added: "The European Parliament has today finally rolled over and accepted a backward-looking budget, devoid of ambition and with almost no possibility to rectify this. The future budgetary period will see the EU budget continuing to focus on old, outdated priorities, whilst providing no answer to the current economic, social and environmental challenges faced by Europe. The EU will continue to spend too much subsidising agro-industry and ITER and too little on education, research and sustainable farming. After all the fighting talk from the big groups, we are left with precious little of substance. This MFF is a missed opportunity to counteract the effects of austerity policies and give a much-needed boost to the economy. That the European Parliament has so utterly given-in to this is a bad reflection on its role in defending the European interest."