The Council has informed the European Parliament that it cannot accept all the amendments for the 2020 EU budget adopted today in the Parliament’s plenary.

This triggers a three-week conciliation process, which will start on 29 October. The Council and the Parliament will have until 18 November to bridge their differences.

I am pleased to see that the Council and the Parliament share many priorities for next year's budget. At the core of these priorities are job creation and fighting climate change, addressing the important areas of security and migration, and focusing in particular on young people. This provides a good basis for our efforts to agree on a budget with appropriate funding levels for the different programmes and areas, based on a prudent and realistic approach and the best interest of European taxpayers. Kimmo Tiilikainen, State Secretary in the Ministry of Finance of Finland and chief Council negotiator for the 2020 EU budget

In its draft budget for 2020 the Commission proposed setting the total level of commitments at €168.3 billion and payments at €153.6 billion.

The Council's position, adopted on 3 September, sets total commitments at €166.8 billion and total payments at €153.1 billion, which is -€1.5 billion and -€0.5 billion less, respectively, compared to the Commission's proposal. Nevertheless, the Council's position still represents an increase of +0.6 % in commitments and +3.3 % in payments when compared to the budget voted in 2019.

The Parliament is asking for total commitments to be increased to €171.0 billion and total payments to €159.1 billion. This position goes above the ceilings set by the EU's multiannual financial framework for 2014-2020.

Next steps

The conciliation committee will meet on 4 November and on 15 November. At the latter date an Ecofin/Budget Council will meet to provide the presidency guidance for the talks with the Parliament. If no deal is found by the end of the conciliation period on 18 November the Commission has to present a new draft budget for 2020.