The EU Parliament and the Council agreed on a 2023 budget close to the Commission’s proposal. It includes slightly higher budgets for Erasmus+ and Horizon.
On 23 November, the President of the European Parliament (EP), Roberta Metsola signed the 2023 EU budget into law after the EP plenary endorsed it with 492 votes to 66 and 46 abstentions. The Council of the EU gave its green light to the budget compromise already on 22 November. The adoption followed three weeks of negotiations between the EP and Council. Member States and Parliament were finally able to strike a deal on 14 November – on the last day of their 21-day conciliation period that started on 25 October. Next year’s total budget is set at €186.6 billion in commitments, and €168.7 billion in payments. This is €1.05 billion on top of what the Commission had initially proposed in its draft annual budget of 7 June 2022 (see SwissCore article). Nicolae Ştefănuță (Renew Europe Group, Romania), general rapporteur for the EU budget 2023 stressed: “To help our citizens, we have fought for a stronger budget in these negotiations, and obtained €1 billion more than was originally planned. This means more funding to tackle the energy crisis, the consequences of the war in Ukraine, climate change, public health, and boosting European rights and values.” The EP’s position followed its budget priorities of April 2022, laid out in general guidelines for the preparation of the 2023 budget.
An important part of the additional budget will be devoted to support Ukraine and to cope with the challenging energy situation due to the war. To that effect, next year’s budget for Erasmus+ of €3.7 billion includes a €120 million top-up in support for students and teachers from Ukraine. Furthermore, the budget compromise foresees €150 million for humanitarian aid. To encourage EU energy independence and to support citizens and SMEs with their high energy costs – and to advance the green transition – the budget now contains an additional €103.5 million to support the Connecting Europe Facility, to fund the construction of high-quality and sustainable trans-European transport and energy networks.
Back in September, the Council of the EU called for cuts of -€663.2 million for Horizon Europe commitments when preparing the mandate for the Czech presidency to negotiate the budget with the EP during autumn (see SwissCore article). While the Commission’s initial budget proposal of €12.3 billion for Horizon Europe already foresaw €100 million more than in the 2022 budget commitment, the EP was able not only to reverse the cuts to the R&I framework programme proposed by Council, but to increase the budget for the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) by €10 million. In the area of public health, the EP negotiated with Council to restore a €200 million cut proposed by Member States to the EU4Health programme and obtained another €7.5 million for the programme, based on the argument that the COVID-19 pandemic is not yet over, resulting in a continued need to support national health systems to become more resilient. The Euratom programme remains stable, as originally proposed at €276.5 million. However, not all R&I related areas survived the budget negotiations unscathed: The EU will lower its contribution to ITER, the international nuclear fusion research project. The final agreement at €839.8 million is lower than the €899 million originally proposed by the Commission.
While the Parliament was able to reverse the cuts proposed by Council and in the end even obtained a moderately higher 2023 budget than the Commission’s original proposal of June included, there is still a sense in Parliament that the EU’s budget would need to be more ambitious to advance the EU in future-oriented areas. Johan Van Overtveldt (ECR Group, Belgium), Chair of the Committee on Budgets said: “Looking beyond our negotiating success, I would also like to see a budget that is more focused than fragmented, one that shows our ambition to make Europe a leader in research, development and innovation.” However, the budget now adopted for 2023, even though higher than what Member States initially supported, does still not include funding for new initiatives, such as budget increases to build the EU’s hydrogen market under REPowerEU (see SwissCore article) – or for the Chips Act that would require higher budgets for the planned Chips Joint Undertaking (see SwissCore article). Thus, despite a moderately higher budget for 2023, the EU will continue to struggle funding its priorities.