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The Constitutional Treaty has simplified the previous arrangements, as the Commission will now present a draft budget and not an initial draft. Moreover, the Constitution does away with the current distinction between compulsory expenditure and non-compulsory expenditure. This has two consequences: the Parliament's influence now extends to the whole of the budget but it loses its right to the "final say" which, in the previous budgetary procedure , enabled it to impose its will on the Council with regard to non-compulsory expenditure. The Convention had actually made provision for the European Parliament to have the last word on all expenditure, only for the Intergovernmental Conference to drop this provision almost entirely. In fact, this remains the case only when the Council rejects the budget after the Conciliation Committee set up by the Constitution has agreed on it.
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