Potential and Limitations of Reforming the Financing of the EU Budget

Our study on the EU budget (commissioned by the European Commission on behalf of the High Level Group on Own Resources with Mario Monti as a chairman) is now available here.

This report, written by a pluridisciplinary team (Jorge Núñez Ferrer, Jacques Le Cacheux, Giacomo Benedetto, Mathieu Saunier, Claude Emonnot, Florence Lachet-Touya, Jorgen Mortensen, Aymeric Potteau, Igor Taranic and me) is divided into five parts:

Part I outlines the present status, what has changed over the last years and the need for a budget to enable the EU to face its present difficulties.

Part II looks at the challenges and opportunities for reforming the budget from a political and legal perspective.

Part III goes into detail about the potential elements of a reform, from an assessment of new resources to reforms connected with expenditure-side improvements.

Part IV presents a set of possible package deals and discusses their merit.

Part V discusses further wider issues concerning the role of the EU budget in relation with the Eurozone and additional considerations, such as the duration of the MFF.