In anticipation of the special EU summit on 20 February in Brussels, the European Parliament has made it clear to European heads of government what the minimum level of the EU multi-year budget must meet. In any case, new income must be tapped. If necessary, Strasbourg threatens with a vote against the government budget plans.
Michel EU has called the prime ministers and heads of state to Brussels for an extraordinary summit because the major disagreements on income and expenditure threaten to halt the functioning of the EU machinery from 2021.
Whether the top will last one, two or three days is not yet clear. Michel EU said that there must be unanimity among the EU leaders anyway. They still disagree on a common position. Austria has already threatened with a vote against any kind of increase.
The European Parliament already adopted its position on the financial framework in November 2018. This basically means that it must be determined in EU what we want to do, that the range of tasks and policy is guiding, and that the expenditure is a consequence of that. The European Commission also broadly agrees with this approach. There is much criticism in Brussels and Strasbourg of prime ministers and ministers who only talk about money.
As an example, the call of the heads of state is mentioned that urgently 10,000 extra customs and police officers must be stationed at the European borders against the arrival of illegal immigrants, but that the finance ministers then do not allocate money for this. The same applies to climate policy: iedereen believes that something should be done as soon as possible, but the economical EU countries apparently have no money for it.
The Members of the European Parliament will again argue today for an ambitious multi-annual financial framework (MFF) for the period 2021-2027. That budget must free up enough money, not only for all existing tasks and activities, but also for important new issues such as climate action, research, digitization, support for youth employment and small and medium-sized enterprises. At the same time, existing EU subsidies for rural communities, farmers and poorer regions must remain intact.
The core of the European Parliament's package of requirements is that there must be 'new income' in the long-term budget. There has been talk of introducing a EU deposit on plastic bottles for some time. A few ministers do not want that, because shopkeepers and industries are against it in their country.
Also within the EU there is already talk of the introduction of a kind of internet / advertising tax. Some countries are still against that, for fear of American countermeasures. In addition, the fine annex punishment for euro-unfriendly EU countries is controversial. There are plans to withdraw subsidies from EU countries (such as Poland and Hungary) if they do not comply with EU rules of conduct.
For such new sources of income, it is 'taxes', and it has been agreed in the EU rules that there must be unanimity ('unanimity') among the prime ministers and ministers. In the European Parliament, such major decisions can be adopted by simple majority.
The Dutch PvdA MP Paul Tang said on the eve of the plenary debate that for the Social Democrats a modern and effective budget is more important than an arbitrary number. The rigid attitude of Prime Minister Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte and Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz who are staring blindly at a maximum of 1.00 %, he says, stands in the way of progress.
Other Euro fractions also denounced the financial thresholds that have been raised so far by some prosperous Western European countries. The Dutch MEP Bas Eickhout (Greens) called that 'Penny wise, Pound foolish'