EU annual budget lifecycle 2014-2020

An annual budget is one part of the Union's long-term budget, which provides the limits for spending for at least five years. This interactive chart tracks voted appropriations for the expenditure side of the budget.

Scroll to the bottom of the page for detailed instructions on how to use the chart and download the data. You can also access the documents about the annual budget (adoption, implementation, and accounting and reporting) here.

How to use

You can select a financial year by using the "Financial year" filter. If you want to view a specific budget phase, choose it using the "Budget phase" filter. It presents an abstracted view of the budget phases. For example, the phase "2014.1 draft budget" means to say that the first phase in the 2014 budget procedure is the draft budget.

You can then choose different levels of detail. For example, you can view the amount at the highest level of aggregation, the budget heading. Similarly, you can choose to see more detail: the sub-heading, programme, and sub-programme level. To do this, click on the chart or use the filter. It is possible that budget categories which are not programmes, for example "Pensions", will appear under the "Programme" category. This has been done to facilitate navigation, and is not meant to suggest that "Pensions" are a programme.

If you want to compare budget phases, then select multiple budget phases using the "Budget phase" filter within the same financial year. You can make a similar comparison across financial years.

You can download the data from your current selection using the "Download the selected data" button. You can also download the entire dataset below.

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Information about the annual budget lifecycle

The lifecycle of the annual EU budget is approximately three years. The budgetary institutions (European Commission, European Parliament and Council) prepare, discuss and adopt the annual budget (annual budget procedure) in the financial year (n-1) before it will be implemented, in line with the principle of annuality. It is then amended and implemented during the financial year (n). Further implementation and reporting take place in subsequent financial years (n+1).

The interactive chart presents ten possible budget phases: the draft budget, the Council's position, amending letters, the Parliament's position, the second draft budget, the adopted budget, and the budget including amending budgets. This is an abstracted representation of the annual budgetary procedure to facilitate navigation. If a budget phase is not displayed, then it does not apply to the selected year.

The amounts refer to voted commitment and payment appropriations, in million euros, by financial year. In order to facilitate navigation, some elements (e.g. special instruments, budget margins) have been excluded from the visualisation, but can be accessed when downloading the dataset.

The structure and amounts are for presentation purposes only. Any formal reference to budgetary information should be to official budget documents and reports.