{"id":1904,"date":"2018-10-08T16:50:11","date_gmt":"2018-10-08T14:50:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/weekly.uhm.org.mt\/?post_type=article&p=1904"},"modified":"2018-10-08T16:50:11","modified_gmt":"2018-10-08T14:50:11","slug":"jizdiedu-l-fondi-ghaz-zghazagh-il-migrazzjoni-u-r-ricerka","status":"publish","type":"article","link":"http:\/\/weekly.uhm.org.mt\/en\/article\/jizdiedu-l-fondi-ghaz-zghazagh-il-migrazzjoni-u-r-ricerka\/","title":{"rendered":"MEPs increase funding on youth, migration and research"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Budget MEPs increased Erasmus+ funds and restored budgets for infrastructure investments, as well as Horizon 2020, the EU research\u00a0programme.\u00a0<\/span>
They voted through a budget\u00a0totalling\u00a0\u20ac166.3 billion in commitments, which is \u20ac717 million more than the original European Commission proposal.\u00a0<\/span>
As for the payments, Budgets Committee MEPs set them at \u20ac149.3 billion (the Commission\u2019s original proposal was \u20ac148.7 billion in payments). The figures include the\u202fspecial instruments<\/a>\u202fsuch as the Solidarity and\u00a0Globalisation\u00a0Adjustment funds and the European Commission\u2019s administrative budget, but not the administrative budgets of the other EU institutions.\u00a0<\/span>
Erasmus+, research, infrastructure<\/b>\u00a0<\/span>
MEPs increased the Erasmus+\u00a0programme\u00a0by \u20ac362 million and fully restored the pre-EFSI budgets of the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF), which funds infrastructure projects, and the Horizon 2020\u00a0programme, which backs research projects, adding \u20ac256.9 million. Both\u00a0programmes\u00a0had faced cuts as part of measures to help finance the EU guarantee for the European Fund for Strategic Investments (EFSI). They further increased Horizon 2020 by another \u20ac65 million and climate-related spending under Horizon 2020, CEF and\u202fHeading 2<\/a>programmes by another \u20ac97.3 million.\u00a0<\/span>
Other major additions by the Committee on Budgets to the Commission\u2019s draft budget include:\u00a0<\/span>
\u20ac346.7 million for the Youth Employment Initiative, raising the total for 2019 to \u20ac580 million;\u00a0<\/span>
\u20ac74.7 million for security-related\u00a0programmes\u00a0and agencies;\u00a0<\/span>
\u20ac50 million in EU support to member states affected by the African swine fever;\u00a0<\/span>
\u20ac28.9 million for support to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).\u00a0<\/span>
Migration<\/b>\u00a0<\/span>
MEPs have reinforced certain budget lines with a clear link to the root causes of migration within the EU\u2019s immediate and wider\u00a0neighbourhood, such as the Development Cooperation Instrument (+\u20ac147,5 million), the European\u00a0Neighbourhood\u00a0Instrument (funds for the southern\u00a0neighbourhood\u00a0and Palestine, +\u20ac146 million) as well as pre-accession support for the Western Balkans (+\u20ac56.3 million). For actions to tackle migration challenges within the EU, MEPs have bolstered the Asylum, Migration and Integration Fund (AMIF) with \u20ac33 million.\u00a0<\/span>
Turkey<\/b>\u00a0<\/span>
MEPs insist that the EU budget share of the second tranche of the \u20ac3bn\u202fFacility for Refugees in Turkey<\/a>\u202f(FRT) must not exceed \u20ac1 billion, in order to keep the same ratio of the EU budget and member states contributions as for the first tranche. As \u20ac550 million were already used<\/a>\u202ffrom the 2018 EU budget, Committee members decreased the Commission\u2019s 2019 proposal by \u20ac1 billion, resulting in a contribution of \u20ac450 million (member states want a \u20ac2 billion contribution from the EU budget \u2013 and the Commission accordingly budgeted \u20ac1,450 million for the FRT in 2019).\u00a0<\/span>
As for pre-accession support to Turkey, Committee members decided not to reverse the cuts made by the Council, further decreasing part of the pre-accession funds by \u20ac66.8 million, arriving, in total, at a reduction of \u20ac213.5 million below the Commission\u2019s proposal in funds earmarked for Turkey, due to a lack of respect for EU values.\u00a0<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":1894,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"spay_email":""},"issuem_issue":[80],"issuem_issue_categories":[8],"issuem_issue_tags":[],"translation":{"provider":"WPGlobus","version":"2.8.8","language":"en","enabled_languages":["mt","en"],"languages":{"mt":{"title":true,"content":true,"excerpt":false},"en":{"title":true,"content":true,"excerpt":false}}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/weekly.uhm.org.mt\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/article\/1904"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/weekly.uhm.org.mt\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/article"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/weekly.uhm.org.mt\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/article"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/weekly.uhm.org.mt\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/weekly.uhm.org.mt\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1904"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/weekly.uhm.org.mt\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/article\/1904\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1906,"href":"http:\/\/weekly.uhm.org.mt\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/article\/1904\/revisions\/1906"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/weekly.uhm.org.mt\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1894"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/weekly.uhm.org.mt\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1904"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"issuem_issue","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/weekly.uhm.org.mt\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/issuem_issue?post=1904"},{"taxonomy":"issuem_issue_categories","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/weekly.uhm.org.mt\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/issuem_issue_categories?post=1904"},{"taxonomy":"issuem_issue_tags","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/weekly.uhm.org.mt\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/issuem_issue_tags?post=1904"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}