Barroso pledges full review of entire EU budget

The European Union's executive Commission will carry out a thorough review of the union's budget in 2008/9, European Commission…

The European Union's executive Commission will carry out a thorough review of the union's budget in 2008/9, European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso announced today.

"What we need to be doing is to have an overall revision of our entire budget, looking at it without restrictions or taboos," Barroso told a news briefing, saying EU heads of government had given the Commission "a strong remit" for such a review at their summit in Brussels last week.

He said the EU must get away from making only incremental changes to its existing budget and go back to first principles, deciding what spending the bloc needed.

The move comes after EU leaders welcomed agreement on a new EU budget yesterday, saying that it would allow the union to move forward after a difficult 12 months.

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The 2007-2013 EU budget, which was agreed in the early hours of Saturday, will be worth €862.3 billion and provide €158 billion funding to the 10 new member states.

A breakthrough in the budget negotiations was achieved when British prime minister Tony Blair agreed to surrender a larger portion of his rebate from the EU exchequer and France and Germany proposed raising the size of the budget by €13 billion.