Chapter 33 – Financial and budgetary provisions was opened on 16 December 2014.
This Chapter includes rules on own resources, which are the EU budget revenues.
Each Member State has the right to use the funds from the Union budget, but is also obliged to contribute to the budget. The common budget funds are collected from three sources: traditional own resources (customs), own resources from the value added tax (VAT), and own resources from the Member States contributions based on the gross national income (GNI).
The EU budget is used to fund a great deal of activities, from rural development and environmental protection to border protection and human rights promotion. The Commission, the Council, and the Parliament have a right to vote on the amount of the budget and its allocation. However, the Commission and the Member States are responsible for budgetary expenditure. For the period 2014-2020 the EU has allocated 959.988 billion EUR.
