Paper Titles & Abstracts

At barely 1% of gross national income, the European Union budget pales into insignificance compared to national government spending across the EU. Yet the battles that surround EU spending and Member States' contributions to the EU coffers have been bitter and protracted over the years. As the 27 Member States negotiate a new budgetary package in the shape of the multi-annual financial framework 2014-2020 (MFF) the battle lines are again drawn between net contributors, notably the UK, Germany and the Netherlands, and the net beneficiaries, the former seeking to keep down the costs of integration, the latter keen to ensure they retain the financial benefits of membership. The debates mirror those that have doggedthe Union for forty years, but why are the decisions over the Union's budget so tricky? Who sets the agenda and how can we account for the fact that Europe's elites, whether national leaders, parliamentarians or MEPs, take such a keen interest in the EU budget, but have tended to pay rather less attention to national budgets, resulting in the sort of significant budget deficits that led to sovereign debt crises in several Eurozone crises? Thispaper will look at the economic and political issues underpinning the MFF and assess why it has proved such a source of conflict over the years.