EU budget 'stable in unstable times,' says Commission 

The Commission's 2008 financial report shows that a record 40% of the EU's total €116.5 billion budget for that year was invested in measures linked directly to jobs, growth and competitiveness. 

Presenting the 2008 budget report in Brussels, Budget Commissioner Algirdas Šemeta stressed that in unstable times, the Union had strived to stabilise its finances. 

Indeed, in 2008, the budget was largely maintained at previous levels, rising only slightly to 0.94% of the EU's total Gross National Income (0.93% in 2007). It increased to €116.5bn from €114bn in 2007. 

Six billion euros were committed for new research projects, €500m more than in 2007, for example. 

Meanwhile, funds spent on competitiveness measures increased by almost 50% in 2008. Funding was committed to boosting competitiveness in areas like education (€1bn for student mobility programmes) and the EU's flagship satellite project Galileo (€1bn). 

More generally, the share of overall agricultural spending decreased for direct payments and market interventions (€43.3bn). Rural development, environment and fisheries dropped from 10.5% to 10% (€11.5bn). Spending on other policy areas remained stable, with €1.3bn going on citizenship, freedom, security and justice (1%), and 5% (€6.2bn) on spending beyond Europe's borders. 

Greece and Poland get biggest slice 

Looking at the EU's two major policy areas, agriculture and regional policy, spending was similar to 2007. France is still the top beneficiary of agricultural support with €10bn, ahead of Spain (€7.1bn) and Germany (€6.6bn). 

As for regional funding, Greece took the biggest slice (€4.7bn), followed by Poland (€4.6bn), Spain (€4.3bn) and Italy (€3.7bn). The UK also featured among the largest beneficiaries, taking €3.8bn for agricultural funds and €2.1bn for regional policy, while at the same time benefiting from a €6.3bn rebate in its contribution to the EU budget. 

Other Central and Eastern European countries lag far behind Poland. The Czech Republic secured €1.7bn of cohesion funding, Hungary €1.2bn, Slovakia €0.8bn, Romania €0.6bn, Lithuania €0.6bn, Latvia €0.4bn, Estonia €0.2bn and Bulgaria €0.2bn.

The four biggest recipients were France, Spain, Germany and Italy, but their overall share fell from almost 48% to just over 45% (€47.3bn). As these countries are also big contributors to the EU budget, Poland emerged as the largest recipient in nominal terms, with €7.6bn. 

2008 also saw more than half of member states fail to exploit the full potential of the EU's structural and cohesion funds from the previous programming period (2000-2006). As a rule, committed money that is not claimed as a payment within two years is lost. The amounts lost rose from €227m in 2007 to €267m in 2008.