The European Union (EU) saw a budget surplus of 2.25 billion euros (3.05 billion U.S. dollars) in 2009.
The unspent amount was slightly under 2 percent of the overall EU budget, which was 113.410 billion euros (153.500 billion dollars) in 2009.
Mainly due to fluctuations in exchange rate differences, the 2009 surplus is slightly higher than that of 2008,which was 1.5 percent.
EU Commissioner for Financial Programming and BudgetJanusz Lewandowski said the surplus will be entered as revenue into the 2010 budget, therefore amounting to real savings for member states in their contributions to the current year's EU budget.
Financial management reforms introduced over the past years have seen budget surpluses fall dramatically by 90 percent since 2001, when the figure was as high as 16 percent, according to the European Commission./.