The History of the EU Budget

The budget of the European Union has four pillars: its expenditure, its financing, its link to funds outside the budget and its audit. This paper looks at the origins of the budget, its development through multiannual planning and annual budgeting. It does so amid the European Parliament’s changing powers over the budget and the evolution of its financing and of the audit process. Since the very first European Community in 1952, there has been a tension over budgeting among the European institutions and the Member States and a close link between reforms to expenditure and those to the financing. During the last decade, the development of a galaxy of new funds and instruments, both separate from and related to the budget, have added to the complexity of the European Union’s financial arrangements.