Intervention by the President of the Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, today at the plenary session of the European Parliament in Brussels It will set the tone for the beginning of one of the most thorny processes in societal politics, such as approval … Multi-year budgets. It is always a very complicated and unpleasant procedure because it requires money and the governments of the contributing countries are usually faced with those who will become beneficiaries.
In this case, the Authority presented a draft budget for the period 2028-2034 von der Leyen He wanted to reflect his political ambitions to increase the EU’s capacity to act in areas such as defense and security, as well as allocating money to pay off the balances of recovery funds released during the pandemic. At least two trillion euros, which represents about 1.2% of European GDP.
Regardless of the final amounts, these budgets are actually very special because it is the first time in more than 40 years that the Commission has broken with traditional schemes for distributing these resources. Traditionally, one third of the Community budget has been allocated to the Common Agricultural Policy and another third to Structural Funds. The new budgets reduce these two chapters to an almost symbolic portion, and the Commission also proposes to return the management of those funds to national governments.
It is not surprising that instead of systematically supporting the EU’s calculations with little hesitation as usual, this time Parliament declared unequivocally that it would not give the green light to von der Leyen’s proposals, starting with the political groups that support the Commission – the European People’s Party, the Socialists and Democrats, and the Liberals for Renewing Europe, along with the Green Party.
Von der Leyen has had to overcome three suggestions of blame in recent months. He won it not without some suspense, because the composition of the room is very unstable in this term. His proposals to reduce the bureaucracy faced by businesses, at the request of many governments, have already suffered their first parliamentary defeat. For this reason, and despite Parliament lacking the institutional tools to impose itself on governments, the possibility of the European Parliament rejecting its budget proposal would leave a very complex situation.
But if, as expected, the President announces a series of changes today to try to get closer to the MPs’ ambitions, she may later face opposition from member states, which as members of the Security Council. advice They are the second and final legislative institution. It is also difficult for her to overcome the criticism that resulted from her designing these budgets herself, without the intervention of other members of the committee who may represent different political sensitivities and contribute to bringing positions closer to Parliament.
There is still room for approval of these budgets (it is not for nothing that the treaties created this system for seven fiscal year periods in the same budget to avoid this kind of painful debate every year) but the process will inevitably be mixed with the flexibility of climate targets in certain aspects of the automotive sector or even with debate about the real effectiveness of recovery funds and the problems raised by their management. It also coincides with the distribution of institutional positions for half of the legislative authority (the Presidencies of Parliament and the Council), which will likely increase the complexity of the process.
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