week six - budget of the EU Flashcards
what is the purpose of the public budget
- to fix market failure: public goods, protecting competition
- redistribution of resources
- stabilise the business cycle
general characteristics of the budget
- main instruments of economic policy
- EU budget is small in relative terms
- the budgets evolution is an essential tool to study integration
- budget authority is shared by the council of the EU and the european parliament, not forgetting the commission and the european council
what are the eight basic budgetary principles
- unity: all revenue and spending items should be shown in the budget
- annual: all budgets refer to an annual year
- equilibrium: revenue = spending, i.e. deficit = 0
(the budget cannot act counter-cyclically) - unit of account: euro
- universality: revenuews are not assigned to specific expenditures
- specification: each expenditure must have a purpose
- good financial management: efficiency and efficacy
- transparency: providing accountability
four phases of the budgetary process
- elaboration: commission drafts a budget
- approval: council revises, parliament suggests changes, council takes those into account, parliament rejects or approves
- implementation: commission and national/regional governments
- control: external (parliament and european court of auditors) and internal
what are the four historical phases of the EU revenue
1) 1958-1970: quotas (contributions by member states
2) 1970-1988: creation of a system of own resources and revenue problems
3) 1988-2020: own resources reform (GNI)
4) 2020-: COVID, eurobonds and NextGen funds
details of phase one regarding the EU revenue
- since the treaty of rome
- system of quotas: contributions by member states depending on each country’s level of development
- budgets decision process: dominance of council of the eu and parliament has consulting role
details of phase two regarding the EU revenue
- since 1975, parliament and council share decision making authority
- system of own resources (ORs) are introduced, union becomes financially autonomous to member states, funding is separated from member states
- ORs have a maximum
- harmonisation of taxes is limited (no common taxes, but some tax base and VAT harmonisation)
define traditional own resources
the ones created with the customs union
what are customs duties
tariffs levied from outside the EU under common external tariff
what are agricultural duties
import duties charged on agricultural products imported from non-members
how were traditional own resources collected from 1970-1988
- customs duties
- agricultural duties
- levies on sugar products
- own resource VAT (from 1979)
what type of tax is a VAT
regressive - average tax burden decreases with income
what were the other resources between 1970-1988 that were not own resources (ORs)
- budget surplus from previous year
- correction mechanisms: to fix budget unbalances between state members
what is the british exception and when was it
- 1984, known as the UK rebate
- correction mechanism that reduces UK’s contributions to the budget (reimbursement of 66% difference between what the UK pays and what it receives back from the EU)
- cost of rebate is shared between member states
- however since 2002, some countries have only been paying 1/4 of what they should according to their GNI
what happened in the 1980s
- financial crisis caused by the oil crisis
- traditional own resources lost relevance, reduction of tariff collection because of increase in free trade
- third enlargement: Spain and Portugal became net receivers
- political discrepancies between council and european parliament
details of phase three regarding the EU revenue
- single european act (reform of financial system)
- relevance of TORs continues decreasing
- since 1988, new OR: % of GDP, subsitutes VAT as the new balancing resource
- new correction mechanisms
- reform of 1988: multiannual financial frameworks (MFFs), lasted five years
- Maastricht treaty in 1992
- lisbon treaty in 2007