Written by Sidonia Mazur( updated on 22.11.2021).
The European Parliament is one of the two arms of the budgetary authority of the European Union, the Council being the other. The two institutions, assisted by the European Commission, decide on the budget in the annual EU budgetary procedure, within the limits of the long-term EU budget (the multiannual financial framework (MFF)). The annual EU budget funds EU policies and programmes following the Union’s political priorities and legal obligations. The financial year starts on 1 January and ends on 31 December. The European Parliament amends the Council position on the draft budget proposed by the European Commission through the work of its Committee on Budgets (BUDG) and the specialised parliamentary committees.
During the November II plenary session, the Parliament is due to adopt the European Union’s general budget for 2022. In practice, Parliament will vote on the provisional agreement reached on 15 November 2021 during the budgetary conciliation between Parliament and the Council. If agreed, commitment appropriations for 2022 will amount to €169.5 billion and payments to €170.6 billion. The negotiations also reached agreement on Amending Letter No 1 to the 2022 budget (AL 1/2022) and draft amending budgets 5 and 6 to the 2021 budget (DAB 5/2021 and DAB 6/2021). The annual budgetary negotiations this year took place in the dynamic context of the Covid 19 pandemic, climate debates and humanitarian crises.
The 2022 budget is the second under the 2021‑2027 MFF. It is also the second year of the EU Recovery Instrument – Next Generation EU (NGEU) – planned to run for the years 2021 to 2023. Several EU programmes are reinforced with an additional €143.5 billion in commitments as assigned revenue to the 2022 budget through the coronavirus crisis recovery instrument, Next Generation EU (NGEU).
The 2022 EU budget includes a net increase of €479.1 million over the draft budget with AL 1/2022. During conciliation negotiations, the Parliament obtained an increase of €508.5 million in total to finance its main political priorities, partly above the draft budget and partly from redeployments. Particularly noteworthy are the increases for: Neighbourhood, Development and International Cooperation Instrument-Global Europe (€190 million); Horizon Europe (€60 million + a frontloading of €40 million research decommitments under Article 15(3) of the Financial Regulation); LIFE (€47.5million), Erasmus+ (€35 million); EU4Health (€31 million + a frontloading of €20 million), the single market programme (€30 million); Creative Europe (€5.5million); and the Citizens’ Rights and Values programmes (€5.5million).
The 2022 budget includes the package of pilot projects and preparatory actions as adopted by the Parliament, for a total of €89.5million in commitments. The Flexibility Instrument for 2022 is mobilised in commitment appropriations for €368.4 million for heading 6 ‘Neighbourhood and the World’, including for measures to fight theCovid-19 pandemic globally.
Further reading
- For more information about the adoption of the 2022 Union budget see our at a glance note.
- For more information on Parliament’s reading of the EU 2022 budget see our at a glance note.
- For more on Parliament’s role in the EU annual budgetary procedure see: Annual EU budgetary procedure: An introduction to the steps in the EP
- For more on the MFF see our up to date blogpost or our interactive infographic.
- For more on the recovery plan for Europe see our briefing.
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