The European Union is an odd spender: unlike national states, it doesn't have to pay for most normal functions of government - like social security, defense or pensions. Its €925bn budget for the 2007-2013 period is therefore mostly dedicated to structural investments, subsidies and research.
Many groups have tried to track how the various funds are spent across projects and beneficiaries. The following page aims to provide an overview for those unfamiliar with the EU's funds, policies and often strange language.
Information about the stability mechanisms EFSF and ESM has been collected on the site of the Netherlands Court of Audit. If you would like to contribute disaggregared data or further knowledge, please get in touch.
The EU's financial planning happens on two levels: through a seven year plan (called the Multiannual Financial Framework) and through a budget, which is decided each year.
- Budget: web site (2012), XML data (2008-2012, on AskTheEU.org).
- Multiannual Financial Framework
- 2007-2013: official site, no structured data
- 2014-2020: official site, no structured data
Farm and Fish Subsidies (~€420bn)
The system of agricultural subsidies (often called the Common Agricultural Policy, CAP) are by far the largest section of the spending. EU Transparency operates FarmSubsidy.org and FishSubsidy.org with great background information on these funds.
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FarmSubsidy.org: Data Overview.
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Official agricultural funds budget information.
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Summary of argicultural funds legislation.
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Home page of the fisheries fund.
Thanks to FarmSubsidies' efforts, data on the beneficiaties of agricultural subsidies was available until 2010. After a ruling by the European Court of Justice, the release of this information has virtually stopped.
Regional development (~€350bn)
Three major funds are used to invest in various regions in Europe: the Regional Development Fund, Social Fund and the Cohesion Fund. Project funding is disbursed by each region and reported individually. In 2010, the Financial Times and the Bureau of Investigative Journalists collected the data.
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EC portal on regional policy beneficiaries.
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EUFunds search engine by the Financial Times and TBIJ, related reporting.
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The same data as a MySQL or CSV file. This database is currently too messy for an import into OpenSpending — please let us know if you want to help clean it up!
Research and Foreign Aid (~€90bn)
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The EU also operates a large research programme (FP7), a nuclear research effort (EURATOM) and overseas development assistance programmes, some of which is managed independently of the budget (EDF). Additionally, the budget includes administrative costs for EU institutions.
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EC Financial Transparency System has all direct expenditure by the Commission, including FP7 and the EDF. A cleaned and extended version is available as an OpenSpending dataset.
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EuropeAid releases a database of beneficiaries.
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Similar information is available through the International Aid Transparency Initiative release of the EC (XML data).
Other funds and related data sources
Further EU spending data sources are available in this overview spreadsheet and on datahub.io. This includes some of the more exotic funds and finance-related data sources, such as:
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State aid register in the context of the current financial crisis.
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EU Accession Funds (IPA), payments to potential member states.
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Tenders Electronic Daily (TED), European procurement announcements
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Eurostat, statistics on GDP, population, deficits, etc.
Errors, additions?
This site is intended as a short briefing for journalists and citizens interested in the EU. It is necessarily incomplete, but we hope to continuously extend it. If you have questions, comments or suggestions, please message our mailing list.
Thanks
Many items listed on this page were contributed by experienced journalists. Special thanks to Caelainn Barr and Brigitte Alfter.
More Information
See the Research Notes.