EU summit: Merz sees no breakthrough on trillion-euro budget
In Brussels, the chancellor calls talks on the EU's 2028-2034 budget "very, very difficult". He wants cuts of several hundred billion euros and advises packing extra shirts for December.
Archive image · Photo: Stenbocki maja / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0 (cropped and resized)
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz does not expect a quick deal on the European Union's next long-term budget. "We are in very, very difficult negotiations on the future finances of the European Union," he said on Thursday at a summit of EU leaders in Brussels. He said he did not expect a result in the coming days, though solutions could come at later meetings.
The goal is a compromise on the 2028-2034 financial framework by the end of the year. The current proposal of about 1.826 trillion euros is roughly 159 billion euros below the European Commission's original draft. Merz considers that insufficient and is demanding cuts of several hundred billion euros.
Ahead of the December summit, Merz advised leaders to pack a few more shirts than usual. The decisive round on the current budget in 2020 lasted about 91 hours. As the EU's largest economy, Germany pays more into the EU budget than it gets back.