Pretraži

During the February II session, Parliament is due to vote on giving consent to the first-ever revision of the EU's multiannual financial framework (MFF). That revision will provide €21 billion of additional funds, including €17 billion for Ukraine. Parliament has repeatedly demanded that the EU's long-term budget be revised urgently, to enable the EU to rise effectively to the challenges it faces. The agreement reached between Parliament and the Council ensures stable medium-term financial support ...

To ensure affordable, secure instant payments in euro that conform to rules on sanctions and financial crime, the European Commission proposed a regulation in October 2022. The new rules would mean citizens and businesses would pay standard transfer prices for instant money transfers. A provisional political agreement reached between the Parliament and Council is scheduled for vote during the February I plenary session.

The main objective of the special European Council meeting on 1 February 2024 is to finalise EU leaders' position on the revision of the multiannual financial framework (MFF). While the aim is to reach an agreement among all 27 Member States, alternatives could be used based on an agreement of 26 Member States. EU leaders may also use the meeting to raise other topics – notably, the war in Ukraine and the possible use of frozen Russian assets, next steps in the enlargement process, security and defence ...

Vincent Van Peteghem, Deputy Prime Minister of Belgium and Minister of Finance is participating in the ECON Committee in his capacity of President of the ECOFIN Council during the Belgian Presidency (January - June 2024). In accordance with the Treaty of the Union, “Member States shall regard their economic policies as a matter of common concern and shall coordinate them within the Council”. This document provides an overview of the Belgian Presidency priorities in ECON matters, including the Council ...

In most countries in the European Union (EU) and in the rest of the world, debt is treated more favourably from a tax perspective than equity, with interest payments on loans generally being tax deductible. In contrast, costs relating to equity financing, such as dividends, are mostly non-tax deductible. This unequal treatment of debt and equity leads to a bias towards debt in businesses' investment decisions and can lead to high levels of indebtedness in the EU corporate sector. On 11 May 2022, ...

This paper provides and overview of the role of the European Parliament in scrutinising the application and implementation of the EU economic governance framework, notably by holding Economic Dialogues with the EU executive institutions and, when applicable, with Member States’ governments. We also assess the envisaged role for EU parliaments in the European Commission’s economic governance reform proposals, notably as regards transparency and parliamentary involvement at EU and national level. This ...

The workshop highlighted various aspects and perspectives around corporate sponsorship of EU Presidencies, including the follow-up of the EU Ombudsman's recommendations and Council guidelines on the subject-matter.

The overwhelming majority of businesses in the European Union (EU) are small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). They employ almost two thirds of the workforce, create 85 % of all new jobs and generate about three fifths of EU value added. In the period from 2010 to 2020, only a small proportion of EU SMEs said that they raised external financing through capital markets (4 %), while a quarter used bank loans, and a fifth used business-to-business trade credits or internal funds. To make capital ...

The EU budget has to reconcile certainty in generating funding for what are, predominantly, multi-annual investment programmes, with a capacity to generate funding on a sufficient scale when circumstances and priorities change. Off-budget mechanisms have largely been preferred for dealing with the latter. This study presents recommendations, drawing on several scenarios, for how the EU budget could be recast to enable it to be more agile and responsive in dealing with new and future challenges requiring ...