"After many hours of intense negotiations on 18 and 19 June 2013, the Irish Presidency, the European parliament's negotiators and the European Commission have concluded the negotiations on the 2014-2020 financial period.

The package will now be submitted to both the Council and the European Parliament.

Due credit must go to the Parliament's negotiators and the Irish Presidency as they showed the required courage to make the tough compromises that were needed from both sides.

The package foresees strong flexibility measures to make the fullest use of the amounts available to the EU budgets over the next years. It includes a binding revision clause in 2016, in parallel with a review of own resources (the funding of the EU budget).

Also, the Solidarity Fund would be enhanced to make it more responsive to natural disasters such as floods, and the new Youth Employment Initiative would see strong funding in 2014 and 2015 as the situation calls for immediate measures."