The European Council on Wednesday reached an agreement on its position on the 2025 EU draft budget amounting to €191.53 billion in commitments and €146.21 billion in payments.
Hungarian Minister of State responsible for the budget negotiations, Péter Banai, said that next year’s budget will play an important role in delivering the EU’s long-term priorities and objectives.
“The agreement reached provides a good starting point for negotiations with the European Parliament, which we hope will allow the budget to be adopted on time. The proposed budget aims to ensure prudent budgeting, and to leave margins for unforeseen circumstances,” Banai added.
Noting that, overall, the Council took a prudent approach, the minister underlined: “The Council stresses the importance for the budget for 2025 to continue showing the EU’s solidarity with the people of Ukraine and to respond to the related crises.”
The Council considers that next year’s budget should be realistic, in line with actual needs, ensure prudent budgeting and leave sufficient margins under the multiannual financial framework (MFF) ceilings to deal with unforeseen circumstances and address the Union’s challenges.
At the same time, the budget for 2025 should provide enough resources to ensure the implementation of the EU’s policies and programmes and to allow commitments already made to be paid in due time.
The Council welcomed that the draft budget for 2025 is aligned with the outcome of the agreement on the revision of the EU’s multiannual financial framework (MFF 2021-2027), as outlined in the European Council conclusions of 1 February 2024.
In this regard, the Council stressed the need to properly finance the priorities laid down in the MFF revision, considering the budgetary implementation of all programmes and reprioritization, when necessary.
Commitments are legal promises to spend money on activities whose implementation extends over several financial years.
Payments cover expenditure arising from commitments entered into the EU budget during current and preceding financial years.
In addition, the Council also issues five statements: one on payments in 2025, one on progress on the implementation of the MFF mid-term revision, one on budgetary nomenclature, one on financing of external policies and one on administrative expenditure.
According to a press statement issued by the Council, today’s agreement was reached between the ambassadors of member states to the EU (Coreper). The Council aims to formally adopt its position through a written procedure ending on 13 September 2024.
The Council’s position will serve as a mandate for the Hungarian presidency of the Council to negotiate the 2025 EU budget with the European Parliament. This year, the legal deadline for reaching agreement on the annual budget is 18 November 2024 at midnight.
This is the fifth annual budget under the long-term EU budget, the multiannual financial framework (MFF) for 2021-2027. The 2025 budget is complemented by actions to support the COVID-19 recovery under Next Generation EU, the EU’s pandemic recovery plan.
