A EUROPEAN UNION summit to decide EU spending for the next seven years has entered a second day after all-night negotiations left a standoff over spending unresolved.
The leaders of the 27 nations assessed the latest compromise blueprint in the knowledge it would leave their common budget with a real-term cut for the first time in the EU’s history.
The deal leaned more towards countries led by Britain, which are insisting that the EU has to make the same drastic cuts that member nations themselves are making in their own budgets as they weather the continent’s economic and debt crises.
They want tens of billions of euros slashed off the €1.03 trillion originally asked for by the European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, and worked off a proposal with a total of €960 billion.
It left the newer – and generally poorer – members, which see Europe as a club that is only as strong as its weakest member, fighting for sustained funding. Led by Poland and France, they argue that Europe means nothing if the budget isn’t used to bridge the wealth gap and help restart growth.
Both sides had threatened to walk away from the table – again – if they didn’t get what they wanted. The first summit to negotiate a budget collapsed in November, but leaders appeared to be inching toward a deal this morning with leaders returning to the table at around 6am.
Irish ministers in Brussels for the summit tweeted yesterday about the talks, indicating they would be lengthy and difficult:
Adding to the complexity, the leader of the European Parliament warned late last night that his legislature was bound to reject the budget offer if it allowed for too much deficit spending.
In a sign of how tough the fight was, leaders delayed the official start of the summit for nearly six hours on Thursday as they huddled in smaller groups, trying to bridge their differences. The full meeting with all 27 leaders finally got under way in the late evening.
The 27-country EU, with a population of more than 500 million people and an annual gross domestic product of €12 trillion, is the world’s largest economy.
The EU budget, which is separate from the national budgets, is designed in part to balance out the economic development of the region by injecting funding into poorer countries. The EU has funded hundreds of thousands of infrastructure and capital projects over the years, from the installation of a broadband network to upgrading parts of the road network. It also sends development aid around the world, to places like Mali.
The budget includes items meant to generate economic growth in the future, such as research and development, increasing digitalization and creating a new, more accurate satellite navigation system. It also funds regulation and administration in such areas as mergers and competition, the review of national budgets to ensure they do not include excessive deficits, and – now – banking supervision.
While many leaders arrived ready for a fight, Taoiseach Enda Kenny was in a good position, having just announced a deal with the ECB about the IBRC promissory note.
As the talks began, the leaders were set to negotiate tooth and nail over an annual difference to the average European taxpayer of €20. The most generous budget proposal would cost the average taxpayer €295 a year; the most pared-down proposal would cost €275.
The EU’s budget for 2012 is €147.2 billion - less than one-fifth the size of the budget of the UK alone.
Leaders staked out uncompromising positions before the meeting began.
“We have to make savings, but without weakening the economy,” said French President Francois Hollande on his way into the summit in Brussels. “If Europe wants an agreement at all costs and abandons its common policies, I do not agree.”
While France’s economy is the EU’s second-largest, it supports poorer countries and is a strong advocate for wealth-sharing. And France itself receives a significant amount of money in agricultural subsidies.
Most of the EU leaders came in with a national agenda in mind, and Czech Prime Minister Petr Necas said the proposals he had seen so far were “unfair.” Since any deal needs unanimity, Necas threatened to use his veto.
Britain was also threatening to tank the talks.
“The European Union should not be immune from the sorts of pressures that we’ve had to reduce spending, find efficiencies and make sure that we spend money wisely, that we’re all having to do right across Europe,” said Prime Minister David Cameron, who said the numbers put forward in November were much too high.
The numbers “need to come down, and if they don’t come down there won’t be a deal,” Cameron said.
In his opening speech, European Parliament President Martin Schulz raised the stakes even further, reminding the leaders that lawmakers have the right to reject the budget.
Schulz noted that a failure to reach a compromise would simply allow the current budget to roll over with an additional 2 percent for inflation -an outcome he said was workable.
- Additional reporting by Michelle Hennessy.
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