The EU’s Budget

The EU’s budget is, in relative terms, very modest in size — accounting for only 1 per cent of EU GNI and less than 3 per cent of total public expenditure in the EU. So, while the 2011 EU budget was almost € 142 billion, the sum of the national budgets in EU member states was more than €6,300 billion (European Commission, 2012i). But despite this relative modesty, the nature of the budget’s revenues and expenditures and the behaviour of the budget’s decision-makers reveal much about the EU’s policy priorities and policy-making processes. Because, behind each revenue source is a tug-of-war between integrationists and intergovernmentalists and between ‘getters’ and ‘givers’. And beneath each expenditure item lie an array of — often sharply clashing — policy priorities and images of the EU’s purpose.