A colossal budget covering the next seven years will be debated at today’s European Council – and no-one wants to pick up Britain’s tab. EU leaders will grapple with next long-term budget, the Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF) today, which will see the 27-member bloc count the cost of life without Britain. But it has not been without roadblocks as the Commission continues efforts to patch over growing rifts while Jean-Claude Juncker tries to rally east and west, north and south, big and small states behind a post-Brexit relaunch next year. It comes as the Brussels bloc attempts to persuade voters it remains relevant after a decade of chaos that has seen ferocious austerity in countries hit by the eurozone debt crisis and uproar over the arrival of more than a million irregular migrants across the Mediterranean in 2015 alone.
Brexit is expected to dominate today’s agenda as member state leaders wrangle over Brussels bosses ambitious spending plans to plug the budget blackhole in further signs it is struggling to unite in the face of life without Britain.
European Union officials are currently working to plug a €10bn blackhole left by the UK’s departure from the Brussels project.
The EU’s largest budget contributor, Germany, has already said it stands ready to pump in more cash to the Brussels machine.
Members have remained divided after the bloc’s budget chief Gunther Oettinger has called on member states to increase their commitments to between 1.1 percent and 1.2 percent of gross national income for the next seven-year cycle.
Britain’s decision to unshackle itself from the Union has also been a double blow for the EU’s more frugal member states, who will miss Britain as a traditional ally, due to its EU budget contributions, and persistence in reining back Brussels in their spending ambitions.
The UK has made an average net contribution to Brussels of €10bn a year since 2013, which has prompted fears that the EU would have to make heavy spending cuts to EU agriculture and cohesion funds.
Meanwhile, Rome’s populist government may have signalled it is willing to make changes by agreeing to lower its deficit target for next year in a bid to avoid sanctions by the European Commission, but the row is sure to rumble on.
The League’s Matteo Salvini and Five Star’s Luigi Di Maio were at loggerheads with Brussels after announcing plans to increase government spending despite claims adding to the country’s national debt could spark an EU-wide financial crisis.
But in a last ditch attempt to get approval from Brussels Rome backed down and offered to stay below a deficit of 2.04 percent of GDP for next year’s budget.
And France is set to add further budget headaches for the EU after French President Emmanuel Macron put forward new costly economic measures to respond to the deadly Paris riots.
The desperate French leader on Monday announced wage increases for the poorest workers and a tax cut for most pensioners in an effort to defuse a month-long public rebellion against rising living costs, which has morphed into the most serious crisis of his presidency.
He is hoping his concessions will quell low-income households in rural France who have taken to the streets to denounce the government’s liberal economic policies, which they say benefit the wealthy and hurt the poor.
But the measures are expected to cost around 10 billion euros and dig a hole in France’s finances and under under rules that underpin the euro common currency, France is obliged to keep its budget deficit under 3.0 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP), something it repeatedly failed to do until 2017.