As for the payments, Budgets MEPs set them at €146.1 billion (original Commission proposal: €144.8 billion in payments).

MEPs increased the Youth Employment Initiative by €366.7 million in commitment appropriations, raising the total to €600 million.

They also fully restored the budgets of the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF), which funds infrastructure projects, and the Horizon 2020 programme, which backs research projects. Both programmes had faced cuts as part of measures to help finance the EU guarantee for the European Fund for Strategic Investments (EFSI).

Funding for a series of initiatives under Horizon 2020 was increased above the original Commission proposal (+€65 million), as well as for other programmes such as Erasmus+ (+€32 million), COSME (+€22.5 million) and the EU Programme for Employment and Social Innovation (EaSI).

Migration, asylum, security and Turkey

Underlining that current funds are insufficient to address both the external and internal dimensions of the migration and refugee crisis, MEPs boosted the Commission's draft budget for agencies with security-related tasks including Europol (€10 million increase), the Asylum, Migration and Integration Fund (AMIF) (€30 million increase) and the European Asylum Support Office (EASO, €26 million increase).

For more stability in the EU's neighbourhood, they proposed an increase of €299 million on the EU’s external action, which includes the Eastern and Southern Neighbourhood.

For Turkey, however, they decreased part of the pre-accession funds, to be released once Turkey has made improvements in the fields of rule of law, democracy, human rights and press freedom.

Agriculture

The Committee on Budgets has topped up support for young farmers by €50 million in order to reduce youth unemployment in rural areas.