Cyprus to receive EUR 2.4 mln from EU 2008 budget surplus

Cyprus will receive EUR2.4 mln from the European Union 2008 budget surplus amounting to EUR1.79 bln euro that will be returned to member states.
According to a European Commission, in 2008, member states' contributions to the European Union budget almost exactly matched agreed spending for the year. With just over 1.5% of the overall EU budget unspent, the high implementation rate of funds has left another record low surplus, reflecting effective budgetary management and ongoing efforts only to call on member states for payments that are strictly necessary.
The end-of-year surplus – the difference between all EU budget revenue and spending – amounted to EUR 1.79bln of the total EUR 115.771bln budget in 2008 and will be returned to member states. This 1.5% compares to 16% in 2001, when the EU budget surplus was at its peak.
Dalia Grybauskaite, EU Commissioner for Financial Programming and Budget said “consistently high levels of budget execution are helping ease the pressure on national finances”. She underlined the particular importance of tight budgetary management in difficult economic times adding “every single euro paid into the EU budget counts and the low level of leftover funds in 2008 demonstrates how money did not lie idle.''
Financial management reforms introduced over the past years have seen budget surpluses fall dramatically by 90% since 2001.