The leaders of the Twenty-Seven are meeting in Brussels for an extraordinary European Council dedicated to the EU budget, marked by threats of vetoes from various parties.
The EU is negotiating its budget for the next seven years, based on the proposal put forward by European Council President Herman Van Rompuy, which plans for a reduction of 75 billion euros from the initially proposed 1,048 billion.
The “big” contributing countries, starting with the United Kingdom, would like to see their contributions decrease, while the “small” countries fear a reduction in the valuable cohesion funds.
Bargaining is underway, but we can already imagine the likely winners and losers.
The fear that a failure, given the euro crisis, could severely harm the EU is visibly too great. The Commission’s strategy was clear: it did not want to upset the large contributors such as Germany with excessive demands.
Moreover, Van Rompuy’s offer is very “German” and foresees commitments of 973 billion euros, a solution close to the 960 billion advocated by Germany.
The most affected will be the cohesion funds, which have been one of the pillars of European policy for decades.
Yet, it is true that there needs to be an open debate on the overall cohesion policy, which alone swallows nearly a third of the Union’s budget.
But it is also true that the aim of the so-called “structural” funds is to reduce the gap between the rich and poor of the Union by boosting productivity and competitiveness in the less developed regions.
But to make cuts at the expense of poor countries for the benefit of rich states is purely scandalous and unacceptable!
The problem is that reasonable calculations are overshadowed by the growing Eurosceptic sentiment in a Europe hit by crisis.
The cacophony will increase, and Europe will move even closer to institutional chaos.
