The decision-making procedures for the European Union’s finances in the Constitutional debate

Abstract

The paper accounts for the veto player system that dominates the decisions on the medium-term expenditure ceilings (the Financial Perspectives) and on the revenues (the Own Resources Decision) and for the joint decision-making mode that has been gradually introduced for the European Union’s annual budgetary process. This two-tier system has been confirmed by the new Constitutional Treaty, which does not substantially innovate the intergovernmental procedures governing the medium term programming and financing. With respect to the annual budgetary process, the Constitutional Treaty institutionalises the rules which have been necessitated by practical constraints outside the Treaty machinery: the new process is modelled on a modified version of legislative Codecision and provides for incentives to the parties to agree on the budget draft decided by the Conciliation Committee