The Council of the European Union reported that it failed to reach an agreement with representatives of the European Parliament during the negotiations on the size of the EU budget for 2019. However, the Council does not lose hope to resolve this issue by the end of this year.The communique of the EU Council contains an updated list of projects in the framework of the PESCO in the field of common security and defense policy of the European Union. This list includes 17 new projects in addition to the 17 projects already approved at the end of 2017. These projects are mainly devoted to the training of personnel, the development of defense capabilities, land, sea, and air combat readiness, as well as cyber defense.As is known, the European Commission is in favor of increasing the defense budget by 3% (to 165.6 billion euros). Representatives of the EU countries demanded to reduce the originally planned volume by 1.5 billion euros, while the deputies of the European Parliament, by contrast, are in favor of a budget increase of another 770 million euros. The parties have not yet succeeded to agree.