The EU budget for 2018 approved by the European Parliament (EP) cuts the pre-accession assistance allocated to Turkey by 105 million Euros and freezes 70 million more to be “reassessed according to developments”.
The verdict on the European Union’s (EU) budget was announced by EP Rapporteur for the General Budget Siegfried Mureşan, EP Committee on Budgets Chairperson Jean Arthuis and EU Commissioner for Budget and Human Resources Günther Oettinger.
According to the announcement, EU’s 2018 budget income will be 160.1 billion Euros, and expenses will be 144.7 billion Euros. The budget allocates 77.5 billion Euros to growth and economy programs, 59 billion Euros to agricultural support and 11.2 billion Euros to the R&D program Horizon 2020. 9.7 billion Euros are to be spent in administrative expenses of the union while the budget for refugees and security will be 4.2 billion Euros.
105 MILLION EURO CUT IN TURKEY’S AID APPROVED
It has become certain that the 105 million Euros to be given to Turkey as part of the Instrument for Pre-accession Assistance (IPA) will be cut. Another 70 million Euro portion will be frozen “until sufficient advances have been made in the human rights area”.
Muresan, Arthuis and Oettinger read a joint statement in the press conference and stressed that the cuts on Turkey’s aid is a result of the country’s contempt of topics like freedom of press and human rights. The statement said, “As long as Turkey strays from European democratic standards, we cannot finance such a regime with EU funds.”
