The European Union budget and the European refugee and migration crises

Abstract

This article examines how the European Union has addressed the dramatic influx of refugees through programmes funded by the EU budget. This migratory surge has placed significant and unexpected fiscal demands on the EU’s current multi-year budgetary framework. As a result, the EU has been forced to employ a variety of budgetary procedures and new fiscal instruments to give it the fiscal flexibility it needs to fund programmes administered inside and outside the EU. Some of these very new fiscal instruments add an additional layer of complexity to the current funding architecture, and it is too early to determine how well these spending practices stand up to Parliamentarian oversight, monitoring, auditing, and regular reporting.