The Irish presidency of the Council proposes an 8% cut to the Commission's draft, down to €1.62 trillion for 2028-2034. The PPE, S&D, Renew, and Greens groups criticise the €141 billion reduction and call for maintaining priorities.
The proposal for European Budgets for the period 2028-2034 presented this Saturday by the Irish presidency of the European Council has received outright rejection from the main groups in the European Parliament. The draft proposes an 8% cut to the project that the European Commission presented at the beginning of the year, which means €141 billion less, according to eldebate.com.
Last week, the president of the Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, had already rejected the cuts demanded by Germany and the so-called frugal countries (Netherlands, Austria, Denmark, Sweden, and Finland). The new Irish proposal has deepened the division and brought the debate to a new deadlock.
The document presented by Ireland reduces the overall allocation to €1.62 trillion for the period 2028-2034 and concentrates adjustments on new priorities: security and defence, competitiveness, and energy transition. The Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) and the Cohesion Policy maintain the allocations of the original draft, which already accumulated joint cuts close to 10% compared to the current budget.
The presidents of the parliamentary groups of the European People's Party (EPP), Socialists and Democrats (which includes the PSOE), the liberals of Renew Europe, and the Greens expressed their "deep dismay" at the proposed cuts on Monday. In a joint statement, the signatories warn that the draft reduces the size of the budget "precisely when Europe is being asked to do more" and "erodes" the bloc's capacity to "finance new European priorities."
"The choice before us is not between a cheap Europe and an expensive one. It is between a Europe that staggers from crisis to crisis and a Europe with the means to shape its own future," the leaders of the pro-European majority in the European Parliament state.
A detailed analysis of the cuts reveals that the new Competitiveness Fund loses 13% of its allocation; the research programme Horizon Europe, 10%; the security, defence, strategic infrastructure, and military mobility programme, 14%; the Civil Protection Mechanism, 35%; and the external action programme Global Europe, 16%.
The parliamentary leaders emphasise that a reduced budget "will not make the challenges of Europe disappear" and "will only impose a greater financial burden" on Member States at the national level, although none of them can face all these challenges "by themselves".
The new budget proposal will be the main topic of the meeting of the presidents and heads of government of the Twenty-Seven to be held in Brussels this Thursday and Friday. With the confrontation between northern countries, supporters of greater cuts, and southern countries, opposed to them, reaching an agreement that the Twenty-Seven had aimed for before the end of the year becomes more complicated.
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