Who Gets What, When, and How? Budgetary Politics in the European Union

Funding: “Jubiläumsfonds” of the Austrian National Bank (OeNB); 124,054 Euro; October 2019 – September 2022

Co-investigator: Katrin Auel (IHS Vienna)

Status: Completed

“Who gets what, when and how?” (Harold Lasswell 1936) has always been a key question of policy making, and European Union politics is no exception. Budgetary negotiations pit member states against each other and facilitate coalitions structured along rich/poor, Northern/Southern, and Eastern/Western lines. EU budgets are closely linked to the political programmes of the Union: they set supporters of leaner and larger budgets against each other and determine the allocation of resources to policy fields favoured by the political left or right. In short, budgets define what European integration is about.

Against the background of negotiations on the 2019 annual budget and the 2021–2027 Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF) — conducted under Austrian Council presidency — the project shed new light on the budgetary preferences of key actors in the Council and the European Parliament. Research on these questions is rare, and existing work often neglects the MFF’s role in structuring annual budgets and the EP’s proposal and veto powers.

The project investigated the influence of institutional factors and explored the contextual determinants structuring the preferences of national Council representatives and EP legislators. It identified which institutions, national governments, and parliamentary groups were forced to compromise and which prevailed in budget negotiations, and linked actor preferences to substantive outcomes regarding the overall budget size and the allocation of specific budgetary portfolios.