Budgetary principles in the general budget of the European Union

Abstract

Background: The subject of this article is the question of the importance of budgetary principles in the general budget of the European Union. Budgetary principles are traditionally defined as postulates of science concerning the requirements to which the budget should conform. Not all of the budgetary principles are equally implemented by the legislator. Some of them take the form of legal norms and are implemented in full, some of them can be interpreted from existing legislation and apply only to a certain extent. These demands are traditionally formulated for the national legislator, but they also remain valid for the general budget of the European Union.
Research purpose: The purpose of the article is to firstly establish a catalogue of budgetary principles of the general budget, and also to determine the scope of meaning for individual budgetary principles of the European Union budget against the background of the traditional presentation of budgetary principles presented in the doctrine of financial law. The aim of the article is also to verify what peculiarities cause the general budget to be based on budgetary principles that are sometimes modified in relation to national budgets.
Methods: The budgetary principles for the general budget derive from both primary and secondary legislation. In addition, the EU legislator’s regulates budgetary principles according to the values described in the Charter of Fundamental Rights, Article 2 TEU and the conditionality mechanism. This article characterises the budgetary principles of the general budget. The research method adopted was primarily a dogmatic-legal method. Complementarily, the comparative legal method was used to compare budget norms in European Union law and in national regulations.

Conclusions: The analysis carried out leads to the conclusion that the role and importance of the budgetary principles traditionally recognised in the doctrine of financial law remain, in principle, also valid for the general budget of the European Union, but certain distinctiveness can be pointed out. The reason for these distinctiveness liesin the different functions that national budgets and the general budget perform, the different structure and nature of expenditures, the different categories and characteristics of budgetary revenues.