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The Pros And Cons Of The European Budget

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The European budget is drafted and overseen by the European Commission. It must first be approved by the Council and then the Parliament before it can be passed. According to European Union policy, the budget must always be in balance. Unlike many countries, the EU budget cannot operate in a deficit. For example, according to the Congressional Budget Office, the United States of America currently has a budget deficit of 5 billion dollars and the public debt at the end of this fiscal year was 13.1 trillion dollars. On 12 December 2014, the 2015 budget was confirmed by the Council to be €145 billion. The European Parliament formally approved it on 17 December 2014. This budget is actually fairly small. It is “smaller, for example, than the annual budgets of Austria or Belgium…which is only about 1% of the annual wealth of the entire EU” (EU Budget at a Glance, 3). To put this number into perspective, there are over five million people in the European Union and in 2013 individual citizens “contributed on average only around 80 euro cents a day towards the EU budget. That’s less than half the price of a cup of coffee in many places in Europe” (EU Budget at a Glance, 3). Ninety-four percent of …show more content…

National budgets focus on social and debt spending. Things like welfare and safety fall under a Member State’s national budget. The EU budget is designed to finance actions that Member States cannot fund themselves or projects that require the cooperation of more than one Member State. This can include environmental issues, transportation, communication, energy and a myriad of other things approved by the European Union. Eighty percent of the budget is managed by Member States selected to oversee the various projects. The Member States are checked to ensure they are following EU standards but the money people put forth does remain in their hands for the most part (EU Budget at a

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