The EU Council of Ministers Monday adopted the regulation laying down the EU’s seven-year budget known as the multiannual financial framework (MFF) for 2014-2020.

This follows the European Parliament’s consent of 19 November, an EU release informs.

Monday’s decision marks the end of two and a half years of negotiations and allows the new generation of EU spending programmes to be implemented as of 1 January 2014.

The MFF regulation enables the European Union to spend up to EUR 959.99 billion in commitments and EUR 908.40 billion in payments over the next seven years.

This is 3.5 percent and 3.7 percent respectively less than under the MFF 2007-13. Previously, the multiannual budget was approved by the European Parliament on 19 November. The EU allocation for Romania in 2014 – 2020 is approximately 39 billion euro.

The Council approved two agreements which will allow the continuation of negotiations with the European Parliament as regards the 70 expenditure programmes. The Council and EO hope to close these negotiations before the end of 2013, so that they could be implemented starting with 1 January 2014. At the same time, the two institutions have to reach an agreement as regards the own resources of the Union. According to the procedure, the council adopts unanimously the value of the own resources after receiving the observations of the Parliament. Later, the member states have to agree with the decision (in most cases, the document is ratified by the national parliaments). As a result of the long process, the most probable legislative act regarding the own resources will be applied retroactively, as it happened in the case of the previous multiannual budgets. (source: nineoclock.ro)