The Council of the European Union and the European Parliament have agreed to provisionally set the EU's budget for 2021 at 164.2 billion euros ($199.4 billion), should the bloc's seven-year budget, which is currently being held up by a veto from Poland and Hungary, get approved, according to a press release on Friday
MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 04th December, 2020) The Council of the European Union and the European Parliament have agreed to provisionally set the EU's budget for 2021 at 164.2 billion Euros ($199.4 billion), should the bloc's seven-year budget, which is currently being held up by a veto from Poland and Hungary, get approved, according to a press release on Friday.
"According to the agreement reached today, the total commitments in the 2021 budget are set at 164.2 billion. 0.8 billion of margins are kept available under the expenditure ceilings of the next multiannual financial framework to give the EU sufficient leeway to react to unforeseeable needs that may arise next year, including in relation to the COVID-19 crisis," a press release published by the Council of the European Union read.
The leaders of the European Union's member states agreed in July on a seven-year budget totaling 1.074 trillion euros, which is expected to run from 2021 to 2027. In addition, the bloc also agreed to establish a COVID-19 recovery fund, named NextGenerationEU, worth an additional 750 billion euros.
Plans to adopt the budget before the end of the year have been disrupted by Poland and Hungary's decision to withhold consent during a meeting of the Permanent Representatives Committee (Coreper II) in November.
Warsaw and Budapest have been highly critical of the bloc's attempts to make access to EU funds conditional on the observance of the bloc's values, such as democratic norms and respect for the rule of law.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has said that his country vetoed the budget over concerns that the European Union was trying to make adherence to the rule of law mechanism contingent on the support of immigration.
