The EU parliament approved the first budget cut in its history.

The budget for the 2014-2020 period was snipped from €975bn (£817bn) to €960 billion (£805bn) after more than two years of wrangling.

Brussels bureaucrats had asked member states to up their EU funding even as its institutions ordered them to cut spending on essential public services.

Budget negotiator Jean-Luc Dehaene said the reduction was "especially problematic as in times of national austerity the EU budget should be higher to compensate for declining investments in member states," ignoring the fact that this austerity is itself a result of EU policy.

The budget is controversial as it funds schemes such as the common agricultural policy which subsidises overproduction of food and drink products. The surplus is then dumped on markets in the developing world at rock-bottom prices, putting farmers in many African and Asian countries out of business.

Agricultural subsidies and regional aid for poorer parts of the EU make up around four fifths of the capitalist bloc's spending, but the budget extends to ideological schemes aimed at rewriting European history.

MEPs slammed its funding for programmes such as the "Europe for Citizens" scheme yesterday.

Portuguese Communist Party MEP Ines Zuber attacked the scheme, which includes a programme providing funding for "initiatives" equating communism and fascism as "totalitarian regimes."

"This is a falsification of historical memory," Ms Zuber charged, demanding that the EU stop bankrolling "anti-communist projects."