Deal struck on long-term budget

Compromise agreement will now be presented to member states and MEPs.

Representatives of the European Parliament and the Council of Ministers tonight concluded negotiations on the European Union’s budget for 2014-20 with a detailed agreement that is now to be put to their political masters.

The deal will be presented to the member states next Tuesday (25 June) at a meeting of European affairs ministers. The greater challenge may be for the Parliament’s lead negotiator, French centre-right MEP Alain Lamassoure, who has to win the Parliament’s backing for the compromise.

Eamon Gilmore, Ireland’s foreign minister, who led negotiations on behalf of the Council of Ministers, said that he and Lamassoure had agreed on a package to put to their respective sides that addressed all four of the issues that the Parliament had identified as important.

There would be flexibility to move money between subject areas and between years “in order to get maximum possible use of money in the budget”. He said that he and Lamassoure had concluded specific agreements for different areas of the budget, which is known as the multiannual financial framework (MFF).

The European Commission will be asked to review the MFF in 2016 to assess how it is working. Gilmore said the size of the MFF (€960 billion) and its structure was being fixed in 2013 at a time of economic difficulty.

The Council recognised that in three years’ time the economic circumstances might have improved. However, there is no commitment in the review clause to change the size or distribution of the budget. The two sides have also agreed “a method to carry forward discussions on own resources” – ie, ways in which the EU might raise its own revenue. But again there is no commitment that the financing of the budget will be changed.

The fourth issue is a statement of “the unity of the budget” to meet the Parliament’s request to make more explicit the borrowing and lending of the EU.

Gilmore refused to say what concessions he had made, preferring to characterise the deal as “a collaborative effort”. He said he was satisfied with the outcome, which he said would help increase growth and employment in Europe. But he was coy about the details of the flexibility arrangements, which he said must first be communicated to the member states. That is the part of the agreement that is most likely to come unstuck, either at the hands of the Council or the Parliament.

MEPs have already made agreement on the MFF conditional on a revision of the budget for 2013.

Lamassoure declined to say anything to European Voice as he left the negotiations, saying that he would put out a statement later.

The Commission put out a statement from Janusz Lewandowski, the European commissioner for financial programming and the budget, saying that as part of the package the EU’s Solidarity Fund would be enhanced to make it more responsive to floods and other natural disasters.

It said that “the new Youth Employment Initiative would see strong funding in 2014 and 2015 as the situation calls for immediate measures”.

The Commission is supposed to agree on a draft budget for 2014 – the first year of the new MFF – at the weekly meeting of the European commissioners on 26 June. Legally, the draft budget has to be published by 1 July.

Lewandowski added: “Credit must go to the Parliament’s negotiators and the Irish presidency as they showed the required courage to make the tough compromises that were needed from both sides.”