Thursday

28th Mar 2024

Tension mounts as EU waits for UK's latest budget offer

  • "Bollocky EU bureaucracy" wastes money, the British ambassador said. (Photo: EUobserver)

EU foreign ministers' talks on the 2007-2013 budget ended after less than a minute on Monday (12 December), with the UK set to issue new proposals on Wednesday ahead of Thursday's summit.

Dutch diplomats said the spending debate lasted 58 seconds before switching to enlargement, while a French official explained "the talks ended because the presidency said we have no new proposals for the time being."

Read and decide

Join EUobserver today

Get the EU news that really matters

Instant access to all articles — and 20 years of archives. 14-day free trial.

... or subscribe as a group

Almost all member states rejected the UK's initial budget offer last week, which included reducing the UK rebate by €8 billion, a common agricultural policy (CAP) review in 2008 and €14 billion less for new member states.

Remarking on the Wednesday schedule, the French diplomat added "It's late, but it's never too late."

Polish and Dutch ministers also gave vent to bitter-sweet feelings about the UK's budget tactics, Reuters reports.

Poland's European affairs minister Jaroslaw Pietras said "An agreement is possible, but indeed not at any price", while Dutch foreign minister Bernard Bot indicated "I am very optimistic, but we have to wait for the proposals."

Barroso makes appeal

Meanwhile, European Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso turned the screw on London with a new letter addressed to UK leader Tony Blair and copied to all the EU heads of state.

The letter calls for higher overall spending, more money for new member states, a permanent legal reform of the UK rebate mechanism and the same EU spending rules for all.

The latter is a reference to UK proposals to soften spending rules for new member states only.

Mr Barroso indicated that under proposed EU administration budget cuts, Brussels would not be able to handle Romanian and Bulgarian enlargement in 2007.

He echoed French comments that "we cannot have an agreement" without a permanent overhaul of the UK rebate, and alluded to Irish satirist Oscar Wilde while warning London to avoid repeating June summit mistakes.

"Failure is not an option", Mr Barroso said. "To fail once is unfortunate. To fail twice would be careless."

UK ambassador in email gaffe

Mr Barroso's letter was rather different to an email sent by British ambassador to Poland Charles Crawford last week and published in the Times on Saturday.

The email suggested Mr Blair should start Thursday's summit by putting a Chinese-made alarm clock on the table and giving EU leaders one hour to make up their minds.

"If anyone says no, we end the meeting. The EU will move on to a complete mess of annual budgets. Basically suits us - we'll pay less and the rebate stays 100 percent intact", Mr Crawford's letter said.

It ridiculed French leader Jacques Chirac for "nagging" the British taxpayer to "bloat rich French landowners and so pump up food prices in Europe, thereby creating poverty in Africa" under the CAP.

The letter blasted new member states for "ingratitude" and said EU development spending should cut out "the blathering European Parliament" and "all the bollocky EU bureaucracy" that sees European Commission "corruption" gobbling up cash.

Mr Crawford says the email was intended as a joke, with Polish diplomats refusing to comment.

Happy to fail?

But other news coming out of London in the past few days has reignited fears that the UK might be happy to see the budget talks fail.

UK prime minister Tony Blair said on Saturday that any deal must include potential common agricultural policy (CAP) reforms before 2013.

"My insistence is that we must at least have the prospect of being able to make a change [on CAP] if we wish to do so", he said, according to the BBC.

French negotiators have repeatedly stated that any plans to reform CAP before 2013 will derail the budget deal.

The Telegraph added fuel to the fire by revealing that the UK treasury's latest report on internal British financing assumes that the British rebate will remain unchanged, in line with UK finance chief Gordon Brown's ideas and a "no deal" scenario.

Treasury spokesmen dismissed the rebate assumption as a routine accountancy procedure, the paper adds.

"Swiftly dial back" interest rates, ECB told

Italian central banker Piero Cipollone in his first monetary policy speech since joining the ECB's board in November, said that the bank should be ready to "swiftly dial back our restrictive monetary policy stance."

Latest News

  1. "Swiftly dial back" interest rates, ECB told
  2. Moscow's terror attack, security and Gaza
  3. Why UK-EU defence and security deal may be difficult
  4. EU unveils plan to create a European cross-border degree
  5. How migrants risk becoming drug addicts along Balkan route
  6. 2024: A Space Odyssey — why the galaxy needs regulating
  7. Syrian mayor in Germany speaks out against AfD
  8. Asian workers pay price for EU ship recycling

Stakeholders' Highlights

  1. Nordic Council of MinistersJoin the Nordic Food Systems Takeover at COP28
  2. Nordic Council of MinistersHow women and men are affected differently by climate policy
  3. Nordic Council of MinistersArtist Jessie Kleemann at Nordic pavilion during UN climate summit COP28
  4. Nordic Council of MinistersCOP28: Gathering Nordic and global experts to put food and health on the agenda
  5. Friedrich Naumann FoundationPoems of Liberty – Call for Submission “Human Rights in Inhume War”: 250€ honorary fee for selected poems
  6. World BankWorld Bank report: How to create a future where the rewards of technology benefit all levels of society?

Stakeholders' Highlights

  1. Georgia Ministry of Foreign AffairsThis autumn Europalia arts festival is all about GEORGIA!
  2. UNOPSFostering health system resilience in fragile and conflict-affected countries
  3. European Citizen's InitiativeThe European Commission launches the ‘ImagineEU’ competition for secondary school students in the EU.
  4. Nordic Council of MinistersThe Nordic Region is stepping up its efforts to reduce food waste
  5. UNOPSUNOPS begins works under EU-funded project to repair schools in Ukraine
  6. Georgia Ministry of Foreign AffairsGeorgia effectively prevents sanctions evasion against Russia – confirm EU, UK, USA

Join EUobserver

EU news that matters

Join us