FINANCIAL CEILING POLICY OF THE EU BUDGET EXPENDITURES

Financial ceiling policy is one of the most important budgetary instruments. Ceiling was introduced by the Delors 1 (1988) to manage the first financial perspective and EU budget stability. Paper is focused on financial ceiling policy of the EU budget expenditures. Financial ceiling is used for the total expenditure size (with relative indicators) and for the individual expenditure headings (with absolute indicators). We designed EU budget models using the methods of financial ceiling, which reflect different total expenditures size (total expenditure ceiling within the range of 2 % EU GNI, 5 % EU GNI, 20 % EU GNI, I % EU GNI, and 1,24 % EU GNI), and new heading structure for total expenditure ceiling of 1,24 % EU GNI. We tried to design the new budgetary structure to reflect the Lisbon Strategy better than actual EU budget. We strengthened following expenditure headings: la Competitiveness for growth and employment, 3 Citizenship, freedom, security and justice, and 4 EU as a global player. The growth of these headings is compensated by an expenditure decrease of the following headings: 2 Preservation and management of natural resources, especially the section of the market-related expenditure and direct payment, and 1b Cohesion for growth and employment. We made comparative analysis, which compare differences between received expenditures into agriculture and structural operations at individual member states in the case of present and new (our) structure of the EU budgetary expenditures. According to the results of this analysis we can say that new budgetary structure will likely be politically unacceptable.