EU financial framework 2014-2020 negotiations enter the hot phase
State Secretary Wolfgang Waldner at the General Affairs Council in Brussels
Brussels, 26 March 2012 – “We are currently negotiating one of the most important EU matters by far: the entire EU budget and the content orientation of the EU programmes for the period 2014 – 2020. After first months of sounding out the positions on the “multiannual EU financial framework”, we have now entered the next, intensive phase of the negotiations”, the Austrian State Secretary reports from Brussels.
At the meeting of the General Affairs Council today, the financing of the following areas will be discussed: “intelligent and integrated growth” (such as research and education programmes), “security of the EU citizenship” (EU activities in the areas of migration and asylum, internal safety and justice), “global Europe” (EU foreign policy) and administration.
“As already repeatedly stressed, Austria as a net contributor advocates that we first agree on a general reduction of the original 100 billion euros proposal of the Commission. We will then be able to see what reasonable shape cutbacks in the individual areas could take”, Waldner said.
“For this purpose we will carefully examine the relevance of all the programmes to ensure that they are all still up-to-date and check how they have been used so far. Austria is also going to push for the simplifying of administrative matters, increasing efficiency and improving financial management. I see an enormous potential for saving here”, Waldner stressed.
“It is also important for us to ensure that future-oriented topics from the Europe 2020 Strategy, such as innovation, research, education, energy, climate protection and rural development are appropriately endowed – despite all the necessary austerity measures. Europe needs to work on improving its competiveness and boosting growth. These are priority objectives”, the State Secretary concluded.
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