The following paper addresses the ongoing debate on the questions of the composition and financing of the European Union's common budget. The authors argue in favour of a significant enlargement of the budget, together with a profound reform of its composition and financing.

In a speech to the European Parliament on 18th February 1987 the Commission President Delors publicly announced the Commission's proposals for a fundamental reorganization of the system of financing the Community and of Community budgetary policy. What is the background of these proposals? How...

The fiscal framework needs in practice to achieve a balance between, on the one hand, effective budgetary rules that allow governments to commit to sound policies and, on the other, judgements and discretion in how these are applied so that the framework adequately reflects the complexity of the...

The poorer member states of the EC are often disappointed at what they see as a very limited degree of redistribution of resources away from the richer members towards the less well off. In a recent paper to the intergovernmental conference (IGC) on political union, for example, Spain calls for...

At its Edinburgh meeting on 11th and 12th December 1992 the European Council came to a number of conclusions regarding the future financing of the Community. The following article examines the implications of the new financial perspective.