EU Reaches Provisional Agreement on EU Budget for 2019 – Statement

MOSCOW (Sputnik) –The Austrian EU Presidency and the European Parliament reached on Wednesday an agreement on the bloc’s budget for 2019, the European Council said in a statement.

"On 4 December 2018, the Austrian presidency and the European Parliament reached a provisional agreement on the EU budget for 2019. This paves the way for the adoption of the budget before the end of the year, if the deal is backed by member states in the Council and the EP plenary next week," the statement said.

The reached agreement envisages the 165.8-billion euros (over $188 billion) total commitments and the 148.2-billion payments.

"This is an increase of 3.17% in commitments and 2.37% in payments compared to 2018," the statement noted.

The draft budget is now due to be adopted by the European Council, which is scheduled to take place at the meeting of the General Affairs Council on December 11.

After that the European Parliament will have to approve the Council’s position on the issue next week.

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