The countries of the European Union and the European Parliament reached an agreement this Saturday on a 2025 budget of 192,768.6 million euros in commitments, or 1.78% more than the 2024 accounts, with funds to help countries facing natural disasters, such as Spain. The agreement also provides for payments of 149,615.7 million euros, as reported by the EU Council in a statement.
This year, €800.5 million was kept available within the spending limits of the current multiannual financial framework for 2021-2027, allowing the EU to react to unforeseeable needs, the Council press service reported.
Including this figure for special instruments outside the multiannual financial framework, the EU budget for 2025 amounts to €199,438.4 million in total commitments and €155,209.3 million euros in total payments.
As part of next year’s budget, negotiators agreed to advance payment credits worth up to 3 billion euros to support European regions hit by natural disasters.
In this way, once the legal basis is confirmed, Member States will be able to use up to 10% of existing cohesion policy funds to prevent and recover from such disasters, provided they submit a modified program to the Commission, a -he emphasized. part, the European Parliament in another declaration. Sources from the socialist delegation in Brussels assure that they favored the inclusion of aid for the reconstruction of the damage caused to DANA. The vice-mayor of Valencia, Sandra Gómez, is part of the Budget Commission.
In July, the European Commission proposed a budget for 2025 comprising €199.7 billion in commitments (the resources that can be allocated to programmes), equivalent to 1.08% of the EU’s gross national income, and 152 .7 billion euros in payments (the money actually allocated to the programs). disbursed).
Member states proposed in September to reduce these figures by €1.520 million and €876 million respectively, while the European Parliament called for raising the overall level of commitments to €201.0 billion and payments to €153. 3 billion euros, above the Brussels proposal.
The European Parliament lamented that the maximum limits are still very low and expressed concern about the “additional costs” of interest from the Next Generation recovery fund, which amounts to around €2.6 billion, “double » of the Commission’s initial forecasts. .
The Council, for its part, called for focusing on major Community priorities when distributing funds, criticized the excessive use of the flexibility instrument – intended to deal with unforeseen events – and insisted on the need not to increase the burden on member states at a time when many have little budgetary margin, according to Hungarian State Secretary for Finance Peter Banai, whose country holds the Council presidency.
Spain expressed on Friday morning during the debate between the countries its rejection of the reduction in the budget of the Agricultural Guarantee Fund, which grants direct aid to farmers, while it was in favor of increasing the allocation of Horizon Europe, Erasmus Plus and funds for external border management, the EU’s southern neighborhood and sub-Saharan Africa.
Finally, the budget agreed this Saturday is “balanced” and “prudent,” leaving “sufficient financial room to respond to unforeseen circumstances,” Banai said.
And he added that “this is a realistic approach which takes into account the current economic and geopolitical context and the need to face the new challenges that could arise in 2025” and “provides for the financing necessary for the reconstruction countries affected by natural disasters. “.
The president of the budget committee, the Belgian Johan Van Overtveldt, one of the negotiators on behalf of the European Parliament, stressed that the pact “demonstrates the EU’s capacity to act and adapt in these times of uncertainty”, such as the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, migratory pressures, natural disasters or pressures on economic competitiveness.
The 2025 budget is the first prepared after the revision of the 2021-2027 multiannual financial framework, which was updated last February to include 50 billion euros in aid to Ukraine and strengthen certain priority items.
The revision amounted to 64.6 billion euros (discounting loans to kyiv) and created a “cascade” system to pay extraordinary interest on the recovery fund debt (estimated at around 15 billion for the period).
The European Parliament and the Council now have fourteen days to formally approve the agreement reached.
It is expected to be approved by the Council on November 25 and voted on by the Parliament during its plenary session scheduled for November 27 in Strasbourg, France.
