The college of European commissioners is scheduled to adopt its proposal for the EU’s budget for 2015 at its weekly meeting on Wednesday (11 June). Janusz Lewandowski, the commissioner for budget and financial programming, will leave the meeting at 11am to brief the Parliament’s budgets committee, which will hold a special session.

This year’s budget proposal will be adopted a few weeks later than usual,  since Lewandowski did not want to present it while MEPs were away on their election campaigns. The Council of Ministers is expected to take a first position in July, in a written procedure. Three-way negotiations between Council, Commission and Parliament are expected to start in earnest in mid-October, with a final phase on 28 October-17 November.

The 2015 budget is the first full budget of the current multi-annual budget cycle, 2014-20; around 80% of the 2014 annual budget, by contrast, consisted of payments for previous programme expenditure. Last week, the Commission asked for an increase of €4.738 billion in the payments that it can make from the EU’s current annual budget, to cover various funding shortfalls.