The proposed increase in the budget cannot be communicated to anyone." This morning, Chancellor Friedrich Merz set a clear negotiating goal for this Thursday: The EU should not spend so much money! To be more precise: The European Union should under no circumstances spend as much in the next seven years as Ursula von der Leyen's Commission has proposed. That would be, including inflation, a total of around two trillion euros.
An unimaginably high sum, say critics of the package, such as the Chancellor. The counterargument: That's only 1.26 percent of the total EU gross national product, reply the supporters of the big solution.
It is a ritual that net contributor Germany opens the beginning of the EU budget negotiations with the Swabian motto "I don't give anything," regardless of whether the Chancellors are Kohl, Schröder, Merkel or Merz. According to the German delegation, the entire spending volume must be reduced by “several hundred billion euros,” which is the goal of the negotiations.
At the end of the day, Germany can take credit for having made its position more than clear. However, the Chancellor does not take home a firm commitment that the EU budget will shrink compared to all of the proposals.
The “frugals” are under pressure
Germany is not alone with this attitude: the Chancellor's negotiating line is, as always, shared by the bloc of so-called frugal countries ("frugals" they are called in Brussels), i.e. the member states that pay more into the EU than they get out on paper. Like Germany, most of these countries, i.e. the Netherlands, Austria, Sweden, Denmark and Finland, are under strong pressure from the right.
Buying compromises with money, i.e. with concessions to the recipient countries, is difficult under these circumstances. The already very weakened Chancellor, whose party has the AfD breathing down his neck, would immediately be accused of wasting German taxpayers' money if a negotiation result equal to the Commission's proposal was reached. The situation is similar in Sweden and Finland.
The Danish delegation announces that the check from these countries, which sometimes made a compromise possible at the end of negotiations, will not be available this time; the recipient countries must understand this. That's also one reason why it looked like nobody had moved even a millimeter on Thursday evening. The frugal countries want to achieve an educational effect: We can't move much this time, so there is no conciliatory rhetorical tone either.
Savings for the farmers
On the other hand, there is also opposition to the Commission's proposal among the many countries that traditionally benefit from EU funds, but for completely different reasons. Ursula von der Leyen has proposed shifting the balance within the EU budget: less for agriculture, less for infrastructure and aid to underdeveloped regions, more for education, digitalization, defense and security. In German: With this proposal you would probably have to save money on the farmers.
Anyone who knows the agricultural lobby in France, Spain, Italy or Poland knows that, to put it mildly, this will be very difficult for these countries. If you now add that elections are expected to take place in all of these countries in the next twelve months, then you know that these countries also believe that they have little room for maneuver in the negotiations.
At the end of Thursday they too had no success to report, other than making their position clear once again. A few days ago the Council Presidency made a proposal that would have left the agricultural budget more or less untouched. But if one thing is certain at the end of this day, it is that only a few countries will accept this proposal as a stable basis for discussion.
Neither side moves
So there are clear fronts, very contradictory positions, but not the big bang that some member states were even longing for at the beginning of the meeting. In the end, you agree to disagree.
The usual beginning of the showdown over EU money, that's what you could call it if many states - including Germany - weren't pushing the pace: The EU budget should definitely be decided before the hot phase of the election campaign begins in France. The aim is to complete the negotiations by the end of the year.
So there will most likely be another round of negotiations in November and, if that works, the infamous "Night of the Long Knives" will come in December. Nobody can yet predict what the EU budget will ultimately be and how the money will ultimately be spent. Negotiations in Brussels between the frugal and the countries demanding a lot of money for agriculture and infrastructure will continue for weeks.
Neither side has moved yet. The fight over big money is a slow-motion showdown at the moment.
