2018 budget

The Council’s overall budget for 2018 amounted to €573 million, 57 per cent of which was devoted to its establishment plan, essentially budgeted salaries (as depicted in the graphic to the right).The next biggest item in the Council’s budget is interpreting costs. While interpretation into all EU languages is provided for Council meetings, most preparatory bodies operate with interpretation to and from fewer languages. Member States receive an annual envelope to cover the costs of their requests for interpretation, and this is linked in part to the envelopes to cover travel costs for meetings. Thus if interpretation into or from their language is requested for relatively few meetings, the Member State concerned will have a larger envelope available to support the costs of delegates’ travel to meetings.