The Cohesion Policy includes several funds of different sizes and goals that invest in areas as diverse as infrastructure and social policies, with the common objective of reducing economic and social disparities among EU members. EU member states and the EU Parliament define the size and rules of these funds at the beginning of each budgetary period (in the European Union, budgets are debated every seven years) and allocate to countries annually. The budget for the Cohesion Policy for 2014-2020 is 351.8 billion euros ($401 billion) — a third of the bloc's total budget, making the Cohesion Policy the European Union's second largest program after the Common Agricultural Policy . Cohesion policy programs are relatively new to the European Union. They evolved progressively from a redistributive mechanism based on quotas for each member state to a regional policy based on global goals and priorities.