Budget 2025: Council agrees on guidelines for next year’s EU budget

The Council today reached an agreement on its guidelines for the 2025 EU budget. The approved guidelines will provide political guidance to the Commission in preparing the budget for next year.

In its conclusions, the Council underlines that the EU budget for 2025 has a key role in the development and delivery of the long-term objectives and political priorities agreed by the Union.

The Council reconfirms that the EU remains committed to providing, along with partners, financial relief to Ukraine, for as long as it takes, and supporting its resilience and long-term reconstruction.

The Council stresses the importance for the budget for 2025 to continue showing the Union’s solidarity with the people of Ukraine and to respond to the related crises.

The Council considers that the budget for 2025 should be realistic, in line with actual needs, ensure prudent budgeting and leave sufficient margins under the multiannual financial framework (MFF) ceilings to deal with unforeseen circumstances and address the Union’s challenges.

At the same time, the budget for 2025 should provide sufficient resources to ensure the implementation of Union programmes and to allow commitments already made under the current MFF to be paid in due time.

The Council urges the Commission to align the draft budget for 2025 with the outcome of the agreement on the revision of the MFF 2021-2027, as outlined in the European Council conclusions of 1 February 2024.

In this regard, the Council stresses the need that the Commission identifies the redeployments necessary to finance the priorities laid down in the MFF revision, as well as the decommitments that are being made available again.

The Council calls on the Commission to take into account and reflect in the draft budget for 2025 all the commonly agreed priorities in the European Council conclusions of 1 February 2024.

Background

The EU’s annual budget lays down all the European Union’s expenditure and revenue for one year. It provides for the funding of EU policies and programmes in line with the EU’s political priorities and legal obligations.