Legislative Observatory
European Parliament
Please fill in this field to find a procedure

2016 general budget: all sections

2015/2132(BUD)

The Committee on Budgets adopted the report by José Manuel FERNANDES (EPP, PT) (Section III – Commission) and Gérard DEPREZ (ALDE, BE) (other sections). The committee approved the motion for a resolution on the Council position on the draft general budget of the European Union for the financial year 2016.

Firstly, the report stressed that Parliament's reading of the 2016 budget fully reflects the political priorities such as internal and external solidarity, in particular:

  • an effective tackling of the migration and refugee crisis;
  • as well as in boosting competitiveness through the creation of decent and quality employment and the development of enterprises and entrepreneurship across the Union (the “three Es”).

Highlighting that the Union is currently facing a number of serious emergencies, Members stressed the urgent need for necessary financial resources to be deployed in the Union budget, in order to match these political challenges.

Overall, Members set the overall level of appropriations for 2016 at EUR 157 427.5 million and EUR 146 459.5 million in commitment and payment appropriations respectively.

The keys areas dealt with in the report are as follows:

Migrant crisis: in this regard, they decided, therefore, to immediately put forward a comprehensive package of amendments increasing the Draft Budget (DB) by EUR 1 161 million both on Heading 3 (Security and Citizenship) and Heading 4 (Global Europe), in order to provide an initial response to the migration crisis.

Union economy: Members stressed that more effort are needed to be undertaken to address the shortcomings in the Union economy by boosting competitiveness, growth and quality jobs. Therefore, they:

  • reinforced the COSME programme by EUR 16.5 million;
  • adopted a EUR 473.2 million increase for 2016 for the Youth Employment Initiative (YEI); 
  • restored all cuts (especially to Horizon 2020 and the Connecting Europe Facility) proposed by Council to the DB (EUR 563.6 million in commitments and EUR 1 421.8 million in payments).

As regards dairy farmers, Members decided to take action with regard to the ongoing crisis affecting European farmers, notably in the dairy sector, and to already integrate in its position on the 2016 budget the EUR 500 million support emergency measures announced by the Commission.

Payments: Members reiterated the importance of the joint payment plan 2015-2016 agreed, ahead of the budgetary procedure, by Parliament, the Council and the Commission, which reflects the commitment of the three institutions to reduce the backlog of outstanding payments. They decided to restore the DB in payments on all lines cut by the Council, on the assumption that the payment levels proposed by the Commission in its DB are the ones needed to achieve the objectives of the payment plan.

They reinforced, by an appropriate ratio, payment appropriations on all those lines which are amended in commitment appropriations, taking into account areas with a fast disbursement profile or a high degree of urgency namely Erasmus+, the two relocation schemes, UNRWA and humanitarian aid. They increased payment appropriations by a further EUR 1 billion to fully cover by fresh appropriations the frontloading of payments for Greece. They also decided to increase payments for the European Globalisation Adjustment Fund.