Funding the European Union. Making sense of the EU budget. What is it for? What should it be for?

In this new study, Professor Iain Begg of the London School of Economics examines for the Federal Trust a wide range of questions related to the European Union's budget. Taking as his starting-point the Union's current budgetary negotiations on the Financial Perspectives, 2007-2013, Professor Begg gives a detailed analysis of the present state of the EU's finances and their likely evolution. He concludes that this year's negotiations will only marginally change the European budget's existing structure. Europe's leaders, however, should already be thinking about an EU budget for the future which is politically more coherent and economically more rational than the present arrangements.

The Centre: Report: Iain Begg; Funding the European Union, 2005 http://www.thecentre.eu.com/site_26/fil/dsk_994_2.pdf

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