Earlier this week, the European Parliament adopted its position on the 2024 EU budget, ahead of negotiations with EU Member States.
As is normally the case, Members of the European Parliament are calling for a boost to the 2024 EU budget (when compared to the Council’s position) to tackle the fallout from Russia’s war against Ukraine, support SMEs, young people and research, and to bolster the EU’s strategic autonomy.
In it position, the institution proposes to reverse the cuts made by the Council in its negotiating stance (€772 million in total, including €166 million to the annual Horizon Europe budget) to the level of the original draft budget proposed by the Commission earlier this year, which includes €12.8 billion for Horizon Europe and €775 million for Copernicus.
The Parliament justifies its position on the Horizon Europe budget by highlighting that over 70% of projects evaluated as ‘excellent’ in the first two years of Horizon Europe could not be funded because of the limited budget envelopes and calls for a budget that would allow each sub-programme (e.g. MSCA or the Clusters) to fund at least 50% of all “excellent” proposals.
Next steps
The plenary vote in the Parliament started three weeks of “conciliation” talks with the Council (representing EU Member States), with the aim of reaching a deal between the two institutions in time for next year’s budget, to be voted on by the Parliament and signed by its President before the end of the year.