In a letter to the French President, Emmanuel Macron, dated Monday 15 January, the French delegation of the S&D delegation had some scathing criticism for the positions defended by the national authorities concerning the forthcoming European budget.
A note of the French authorities on the forthcoming multi-annual financial framework, which we referred to in an earlier edition (see EUROPE 11935), explains unambiguously that the EU cannot continue to pay between 27 what it is now paying for between 28 and indicates budget cuts to the cohesion and common agricultural policies.
This sentence was deeply upsetting to the French S&D delegation, whose letter expresses its surprise and concern at the French stances which, it argues, go against the EU treaties, particularly article 311 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the EU, which stipulates that the EU “shall provide itself with the means necessary to attain its objectives and carry through its policies”. “There is no love without proof of love. An ambitious Europe requires an ambitious budget, but your position suggests that European ambition could end up looking like ambition for budgetary rigour”, they write (our translation).
“As we have seen for months, this document shows the gulf that exists between what the President says and what he does, in this case his stated desire to strengthen Europe and his actual proposal to reduce the EU budget”, said French MEP Isabelle Thomas (S&D), one of the authors of the letter.
The other major source of concern for the MEPs is the hierarchy of expenditure posts referred to in the French note, targeting firstly defence, border management and immigration, plus education, at the expense of the two major traditional European policies of the cohesion and common agricultural policies.
The MEPs call for the European project instead to be given new own resources in order to break the budgetary stranglehold imposed by the member states, in a reform that would both “relieve the national budgets and bring the European budget out of the vicious circle of perpetual cuts”.
A warning over conditionality. The authors of the letter also warned against introducing new conditions that “would equate to punishing local authorities, businesses and citizens for the inconsistencies or excesses of their central state”. The MEPs consider that such an idea is attractive on paper, but would lead to “unfair sanctions”. Readers may recall that the plans to introduce conditions, for instance on the rule of law, are popular with certain member states, such as France and Italy (see EUROPE 11935) and within the European Commission (see EUROPE 11895). (Original version in French by Pascal Hansens)