The EU is preparing for a tough new round of negotiations on its multi-year budget, despite a deal reached by government leaders last month.
The European Parliament has adopted a resolution urging the governments to settle outstanding budget bills, to avoid a shortfall.
The MEPs also want a flexible 2014-2020 budget, so that money not spent in one area can be used in another if needed.
For the first time the EU's multi-year budget is to be cut - by 3.3%.
A European Parliament official told BBC News that the EU was obliged to pay 217bn euros (£191bn; $283bn) because of contracts already agreed under the current multi-year budget.
The EU treaty says the 27-nation bloc's budget must always balance, so it cannot accumulate debts, unlike national governments.
The official, who asked not to be named, also said the EU still had an outstanding 16.2bn euros to pay for last year's commitments to projects in Europe's least developed regions.
The parliament argues that such debts must be settled as soon as possible, so as not to jeopardise important long-term research programmes and innovation projects, which are priority areas for the EU in the current economic crisis.
On flexibility, the parliament official said that "if there's a smaller budget they have to be able to use the available money in the best possible way.
"If you lack payments for a research contract you cannot sign the tender, but if there is money left over from rural development then that should be used for more urgent issues."
Figures not disputedMost of the political groups in the parliament agreed on the resolution, which was voted through on Wednesday, by some 506 votes to 161 (provisional figures).
The resolution will be the negotiating mandate for MEPs when they try to finalise the budget with the EU governments, who are collectively called the Council.
The budget, officially called the Multi-annual Financial Framework (MFF), has to be agreed by the end of this year, otherwise various EU programmes will face the serious risk of a funding shortfall.
The MEPs are also calling for a mid-term review of the budget, to give newly-elected MEPs and the next European Commission a say after the European elections next year.
The resolution says parliament rejects the Council's conclusions on the MFF and believes the Council has ignored parliament's new powers in budgetary policy, acquired under the Lisbon Treaty.
However, the resolution does not explicitly reject the budget figures agreed by the Council at its marathon Brussels summit last month.
The European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) group, which includes the UK Conservatives, put forward its own resolution, saying it accepts the budget ceilings set by the Council, as "a pragmatic and realistic response to difficult fiscal and economic conditions", but this was rejected.
UK Prime Minister David Cameron pushed hard to cut the EU budget at the Brussels summit, with support from some other countries including Germany, the Netherlands and Sweden.
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