General budget of the European Union for the financial year 2013

In the Council, the Member States were very eager to cut EU budget expenditure.

They ignored the fact that the EU is legally obliged to make certain payments, e.g. to issue refunds to organisations supported by EU funding or to disburse Erasmus grants to students.

Such payments caused a shortfall in the 2012 budget.

To at least partly cover this 2012 budget shortfall, Parliament had to reach an agreement on the EU's 2013 budget.

Since the Council insisted on cuts being made, the negotiations dragged on, with some budget lines at risk of being frozen in the meantime.

The Greens are convinced that the EU budget should be used to help the European economy put the crisis behind it.

The Member States' governments are fond of proclaiming this themselves, but we want them to practice what they preach. Therefore, we find their insistence on structurally underfunding the EU budget unacceptable.

We criticised the agreement reached for both failing to bridge 2012 budget shortfall and continuing the under-budgeting trend in 2013.

The agreement condemns the EU to cyclical budget crises, with EU governments simply refusing to deliver on previously made commitments.

Faced with resistance from the EPP, S&D and ALDE, the Greens proved unable to cut spending on the expensive, but as yet unproductive ITER fusion reactor.

We also regret Parliament's impotence to resist the Council's demands to scale back the Growth Pact, which the Member States had only announced in the Council a few months before.