The European Parliament as a budgetary extractor since the Lisbon Treaty

After the Lisbon Treaty came into effect, the European Parliament has seen its powers over the negotiations of the European Union’s annual budget reduced. This article shows that, despite initial setbacks and a position of relative weakness in the budgetary negotiations, the Parliament can extract, through threat of veto, significant concessions in the three pillars of the budget: annual expenditure; long-term expenditure; and the revenue side. Through process tracing and interviews with key actors, the article evaluates the Parliament’s successes and failures in negotiating the 2013 budget package and the circumstances under which the Parliament can maximise its limited power.