EU agrees multi-year budget

EU leaders finally reached a seven-year budget accord yesterday after marathon talks driven by sharp differences over the bloc's priorities for the rest of the decade.
"Deal done!" summit chair and EU President Herman Van Rompuy said on Twitter after more than 24 hours of tough talks between the bloc's 27 heads of state and government.
"Worth waiting for," he added, without giving details of the deal.
Pushed by British Prime Minister David Cameron, who said the EU could not decide an increase at a time of austerity, leaders were looking at a cut in spending of around three percent compared with the previous budget, according to a draft.
France, along with Italy, fought to protect spending it saw as essential to boost growth and jobs at a time of record unemployment.
A draft worked out overnight set 2014-20 actual spending or "payments" at 908.4 billion euros ($1.2 trillion), with an absolute ceiling of 960 billion euros for spending "commitments" to the budget.
That is just one percent of the bloc's gross domestic product. It would represent a 3.0 percent cut from the 2007-13 budget and is less than the 973 billion euros Cameron and allies such as the Netherlands rejected at a budget summit in November that collapsed without a deal.
Originally, the European Commission had wanted a 5.0 percent increase in commitments to 1.04 trillion euros ($1.4 trillion) -- just over one percent of the EU's total gross domestic product.