17 countries join forces to oppose EU budget cuts

BRUSSELS — Seventeen EU governments have publicly warned against cuts to agriculture and regional payouts in the next seven-year budget, in a rebuke of Germany’s stance in the negotiations. The letter — signed on Friday by Italy, Spain and Poland among others — heaps pressure on the Irish rotating presidency of the Council of the EU to leave untouched almost €900 billion of spending in the upcoming draft budget, which is expected to be presented next week. This sets up tensions with a rival camp of six countries led by Germany, which renewed calls for cuts of several hundred billion euros across the board in a joint letter earlier this week. “We therefore believe that the overall funding for Cohesion Policy and the CAP must be preserved in the next MFF,” the seventeen countries wrote in the letter to Irish Taoiseach Micheal Martin seen by POLITICO. The signatories include Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czechia, Estonia, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain. Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and Romanian President Nicușor Dan coordinated the initiative and will host an informal meeting of those countries in the margins of the next European Council on Oct. 15 and 16. The Multiannual Financial Framework, or MFF, finances everything from farmers’ subsidies to development aid, and is among the toughest negotiations in Brussels. In 2025, the European Commission proposed a budget of nearly €2 trillion for the 2028-2034 period and shifted hundreds of billions from agriculture and regional payouts, known as cohesion policy, to new priorities such as defense and competitiveness. The so-called Friends of Cohesion group warned that further reductions to agricultural and cohesion “would only weaken it [budget] and risk undermining public support for the European project.” Ireland’s negotiating document, or negobox, will set the scene for discussions among the EU’s 27 leaders during the summit in Brussels in October. EU governments are rushing to secure a final agreement among themselves by the end of the year, before national elections in France, Poland and Italy threaten to derail the negotiations. One of the most sensitive issues involves introducing new EU-wide taxes, known as own resources, to finance the budget. The Commission proposed five new levies that are estimated to generate €66 billion per year. The tax package is strongly supported by France, but individual proposals have been opposed by several national governments who fear that they will be disproportionately affected by the levies. The 17 countries wrote in the letter that new own resources”should be genuine, fair, simple and non-regressive.” To create more leeway, they also renewed calls to delay repayments of post-Covid debt that is expected to cost €25 billion per year and opposed budget discounts to wealthier countries, known as rebates.