EU must tighten the belts. There are EU member countries which don’t want to pay so much to the EU Ursula von der Leyen is asking for. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz will bring together the leaders of those member states which pushing for hundreds of billions of euros to be sliced off the next seven-year EU budget.
The European Commission proposed near-€2 trillion budget for 2028-2034. “The total budget must be substantially reduced — by hundreds of billions of euros,” Austrian Chancellor Christian Stocker told POLITICO, echoing a similar recent call from Merz. “It is unacceptable that Brussels is discussing the largest budget in history while we at home have to tighten our belts.”
Heads of the Netherlands, Finland, Austria, Denmark, Sweden and Germany are going to meet in Berlin. They don’t just want the size of the budget to shrink by hundreds of billions of euros, they also want shift the way it is spent away from areas such as agriculture toward defense and security. And they want to impose conditions to stop governments getting cash if they breach democratic standards.
Getting everyone on board on the bloc’s seven-year budget, known as the Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF), has always been a tough task. But no previous Commission had to contend with a looming trade war threatening to batter its economy, the soaring cost of supporting Ukraine, lingering instability in the Middle East, a deepening climate crisis, and mounting pressure to restore the European economy’s faltering competitiveness.
“The next MFF will be the most ambitious ever proposed,” Commission President Ursula von der Leyen told reporters on Wednesday. “It is more strategic, more flexible, more transparent, and we’re investing more in our capacity to respond and in our independence.”
Questions about the overall size of the budget, where the funds will be directed, and how the cash pot will be funded remain unresolved, as leaders race to strike a deal by the end of the year ahead of a packed electoral calendar.
“The MFF must be modernised and reformed both in its architecture and the way it allocates resources,” said the statement of the six member states opposing the size of the present budget, as “virtually all member states are undertaking painful fiscal consolidation.”
