Performance budgeting: A means to improve EU spending

Please note: Each In-Depth Analysis is assigned a DOI (digital object identifier), which is a safe and long term way of ensuring a hyperlink to the full text of this report. However, when ESO creates this record, on occasion the DOI still has not been activated by the EU Bookshop. If you find the source url hyperlink does not work please use the alternative location hyperlink listed as a related url.In 2015, the European Commission launched an initiative entitled 'The EU budget focused on results'. It was aimed at changing spending culture and making results a horizontal priority for the EU budget. The initiative was based on a popular contemporary budgeting method known as 'performance budgeting'.

This paper presented the method and its application to the EU budget. It explained why, although not easy to implement, performance budgeting was seen as an attractive way to increase value for money and enhance the transparency and democratic accountability of public finances. The paper also analysed how the performance budgeting approach had evolved within the EU budgetary system and what challenges and obstacles to its implementation remained. The commitment of the European Commission to the principles of performance budgeting, as well as the broad support for the idea expressed by the European Parliament and the Council, gave grounds to believe that these efforts would continue in the post-2020 Multiannual Financial Framework.

• Primary Source

European Parliament: European Parliamentary Research Service: In-Depth Analysis, March 2018: Performance budgeting: A means to improve EU spending http://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/IDAN/2018/608724/EPRS_IDA(2018)608724_EN.pdf

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