by N. Peter Kramer
At the end of this week, 20 and 21 February, the 27 EU leaders are invited by their president, Charles Michel, for an EU Council summit in Brussels, to discuss the EU’s next long-term budget. A big problem has to be solved. The UK’s withdrawal from the European Union has left a huge €75bn hole in the EU budget for the next seven years, the so-called multiannual financial framework (MFF) 2021 to 2027.
Last week President Michel put forward a proposal for the MFF of €1.09tn. That would be worth 1.07 per cent of the EU’s total gross national income; more than the 1 per cent that the so-called frugal member states (read: those that pay the EU’s finances, the net-contributors) have insisted they are willing to pay. On Monday 17 February the prime ministers of four of the frugal states (Austria, Denmark, Sweden and the Netherlands) wrote an op-ed in the Financial Times (FT). ‘ We must consider that the UK, a large contributor to the EU budget, has left the bloc. Now that we have a smaller union of 27 member states, we simply have to cut our coat according to our cloth. The responsible approach in this situation is to prioritise, in the interest of our taxpayers’, they wrote.
In the meantime, also the European Parliament (EP) is not happy with the proposal of 1.07 per cent by the Council President. For the EP it is not enough. ‘Who thinks that Brexit means less Europe and therefor less budget is wrong’, EP President David Sassoli said. ‘We do not need less Europe; we need a stronger Europe with a strong budget in the interest of our citizens’.
You can find the response of the four frugal prime ministers in their FT op-ed: ‘The success of the European project is measured by our ability to deliver on our political ambitions and achieve tangible results for our citizens – not by the size of the budget’. Hear hear.
