BRUSSELS - No agreement has been reached at the Brussels summit on the EU budget. "In the past few weeks and days we have been working very intensively with a view to reaching an agreement on the budget, unfortunately today we observed that an agreement was not possible and that more time is needed." This was said by the President of the European Council Charles Michel at the end of the extraordinary Council on the EU budget.
"Italy has received the mandate together with Romania and Portugal to draw up a counter-proposal in line with a more ambitious plan" for the EU budget. This was said by Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte at the end of the Brussels summit closed without agreement.
"If we want an ambitious Europe, then it means that we need financial instruments that are consequent and related to the objectives," said Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte. "We are in excellent company, Italy is with the vast majority of countries for an ambitious Europe," he added.
"We could not reach an agreement because there were still too great differences" between the positions of individual countries. "There is still a lot of work to be done. There has been a proposal but we have not yet seen the details and it takes more time to reach an agreement," said Chancellor Angela Merkel at the end of the European Council.
"I'm sorry we couldn't find an agreement, we defended the pac, outermost regions, defense and space and digital. That is, the new EU priorities. There was no unanimity for ambition, we work in the coming months for an agreement", he explained French President Emmanuel Macron.
Now "we have to keep working, time is short", otherwise by 2021 we will no longer have Erasmus, cohesion policies and resources to face the great challenges facing the EU such as the environment and digital, he said the President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen.
"The European Parliament is disappointed by the inability of the European Council to find an agreement on the next multiannual financial framework and own resources," said President of the European Parliament David Sassoli. "No country alone can adequately address these challenges and maintain its current position - he continues -. It is therefore essential to quickly find an ambitious agreement on the long-term EU budget and own resources"
In the afternoon, a new negotiating base had been made among the leaders of the 27 on the EU budget 2021-2027, which sets the bar at 1.069% of European GDP in commitments (from 1.074%) and 1.049% in actual payments for to verify the possibility of an agreement, according to what is learned from European diplomatic sources.
The new proposal included a cut of 10 billion in commitments and 14 in payments compared to the previous one of the President of the European Council, Charles Michel. The main scissors were affected by the Horizon Europe and space research program, which would lose almost a billion each (from 80.9 billion to 80 Horizon, from 13.2 to 12.3 space). On the other hand, the billion and a half for military mobility was completely eliminated. The Fund for the 'green' transition of the regions grows slightly, from 7.5 to 7.8 billion. The new negotiating text also calls for an increase of 4.4 billion (+2 billion in direct payments, +2.4 in rural development) that Michel had planned to set aside for any new needs. In the same way, € 4.8 billion would be added to cohesion policy, from which States could, however, voluntarily remove resources to transfer them to the new Instrument for convergence and competitiveness (BICC), that is what remains of the idea of the budget of the euro zone. As regards new revenues, the proposal to strengthen the system for the exchange of CO2 - ETS quotas is eliminated, thus leaving only the tax linked to non-recycled plastic. On the chapter of corrections (rebates) to national contributions, the text would like to keep them for the 5 countries that benefit from them, adding one for Sweden and Denmark as countries outside the Eurozone that participate in the financing of the BICC.