Member States receive funds for agriculture, structural development (e.g. infrastructure works) and internal policies (e.g. training, research, environmental protection), but in exchange have to make a contribution to the EU budget. Given the overall low level of income per head as compared to the rest of the EU, the ten new Member States receive a considerable amount of transfers with a view to fostering their catching-up process. While it is often argued that EU accession increases a countryœs budget deficit, the calculations show that the fiscal impact of the EU financial flows in the medium-term should be favourable. Nevertheless, the challenges in restructuring budgetary and administrative procedures to be able to absorb the projected payments in the EU financial framework should be recognised.
Consists of three parts: experience of net beneficiaries and net contributors, the future of structural funds and the EU enlargement and expectations of candidate countries.
The overall financial framework of the EU for the years 2000-2006 provides for specific transfers in favour of the applicant countries during future eastern enlargement. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the budgetary implications for the applicants joining the Union. Generally, the impact may depend on the following factors: - the date on which the applicant country joins, - developments in the EU policies, in particular the decisions on the common agricultural policy and guidelines for structural measures, - the progress made by the applicant countries in terms of GDP growth, increased competitiveness, productivity and their ability to meet the criteria coming from acquis communautaire, - transitional arrangements that will come out of the negotiations. In the view of the above, only an overall estimate for certain budget categories was made.
Whenever the European Union's budget is discussed, much of the political focus is on net balances - whether countries pay in more than they receive - rather than on the broader overall positive effects of EU spending. Thelargest net contributor countries have sought to limit their contributions,leading to the build-up of an ad-hoc, complex, opaque and regressivesystem of revenue corrections.To inform debate on the 2021-2027 EU budget, I estimated the impact on net balances of the 2018 European Commission multiannual budget proposal, under three scenarios: elimination of rebates for all of the 2021-2027 new budget period, gradual elimination of rebates and non-elimination of rebates. These estimates were done on the basis of the EU's "operating budgetary balance" indicator, and on the basis of a new and broader indicator, the "net direct balance". The calculation also takes into account the estimated net contribution of the United Kingdom to the 2021-2027 EU budget based on the draft EU-UK withdrawal agreement.Under the baseline scenario of the Commission's proposal, those member states that currently benefit from rebates would face between 0.01 percent of GNI and 0.06 percent of GNI increases in their net contributions to the EU budget, measured by the EU's operating budgetary balance indicator. Meanwhile, central and eastern European member states that received several percent of their GNI as net payments from the EU in 2014-2020 would face significant reductions, though they would still receive net payments of about two percent of their GNI in 2021-2027.The methodology in this paper can be easily applied to estimate the net balance implications of any new MFF proposal.
The Member States' structure of revenue is stable over time and their sources of revenue are diversified. Moreover, the size of the Member States' budget is generally increasing. Conversely, the financing structure of the European Union has changed over time and the sources of revenue are not diversified. The EU budget size is levelling off. Very small in size compared to national budgets, the EU budget is an investment budget with a strong leverage effect, i.e. one euro spent from the EU budget generates more than one euro in investment. Today, around 83% of the total EU revenue comes from two resources which are, in fact, financial transfers from national budgets (GNI- and VAT-based resources) and cannot be seen as true own resources for the EU as defined in the Treaty. In particular, the VAT-based resource, contrary to its name, is not levied on the final consumer but collected on a Member State statistically computed VAT base. In addition, specific arrangements granted to some Member States to reduce their contributions increase the inconsistency among Member States and the complexity of the system. Therefore, the current system to finance the EU is difficult to understand for most EU citizens.
This open access book deals with Article 7 TEU measures, court proceedings, financial sanctions and the EU Rule of Law Framework to protect EU values with a particular focus on checks and balances in EU Member States. It analyses substantive standards, powers, procedures as well as the consequences and implications of the various instruments. It combines the analysis of the European level, be it the EU or the Council of Europe, with that of the national level, in particular in Hungary and Poland. The LM judgment of the European Court of Justice is made subject to detailed scrutiny.
"This paper analyses the relation between transfers, migration and income levels. While European countries have been very generous by opening their frontiers to trade, investing in transition countries, and accepting as EU new members some of the latter, their migration policies were less liberal. The policy coherence debate is an old theme in the international economics literature, which is revisited here by looking at the relationships between aid and migration policies towards new member states. Are they substitutes or complements? What happens if eastern European labour markets conditions improve? In theory, potential migrants will stay home, and the concern of being invaded by skilled/unskilled workers searching for better conditions and higher wages in the old member states can be alleviated. But in practice, at low level or revenue in the origin countries, economic progress can result in lowering a budgetary constraint (potential migrants cannot afford the cost of moving), leading to more migration pressures. We therefore compute the critical level of GDP, above which an increase in European transfers and improvement in economic situation of the recipient country will not lead to an increase in migration pressures by decreasing the cost of moving. It amounts to 2837 $US for within European migration. We argue that this critical level is not the same for a skilled and for an unskilled individual. In other words, the critical revenue, under which a skilled individual with better opportunities abroad decides to migrate, will be higher than the critical revenue for an unskilled worker, who may be better off by staying home and looking for a job at home: US$15085 for the former, and USD 4384 for the latter. This has an important implication, namely that in some cases, increasing financial transfers will result in increasing the gap between skilled and unskilled departures from countries suffering already from a brain drain phenomena."--Document home p.
Often described as complex, opaque and unfair, the EU budget financing system is an “unfinished journey.” One of the most critical issues is that EU revenue, drawn from the cashbox of national taxation, remains impalpable to the general public. The nature of the EU as a union of states and their nationals makes the visibility of EU revenue unavoidable. The political sustainability of a move that would put the legitimacy of EU revenue at the forefront of public discussion will depend on the European Commission’s ability to show that EU funds can achieve results that are truly beyond member states’ reach. The value-added tax (VAT) is a natural choice for funding the EU budget, through a dedicated EU VAT rate as part of the national VAT and designed as such in fiscal receipts, whose use as a means for raising EU citizens’ awareness could be encouraged already in the current arrangements.
This book offers a comprehensive analysis of the legal and political challenges surrounding the EU accession of the Baltic States. It examines the impact of EU enlargement on relations with Russia and on the constitutional development of the countries concerned.
