EU leaders to face off in budget summit

EU LEADERS are to hold a Brussels summit Thursday to set a seven-year budget despite splits between some stingy rich nations, poorer ones wanting to preserve spending and others wanting to fund grand global ambitions.

The money tussle, hard-fought at the best of times, is especially problematic this time around because of Britain’s departure from the EU. The “Brexit gap” caused by the loss of the UK’s contribution is 75 billion euros ($81 billion) over the 2021-2027 period.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel on the eve of the summit predicted “very tough and difficult negotiations” around the table.

The talks are expected to be so strained that some

of the 27 EU delegations are preparing for the summit to drag out into the weekend.

A few EU sources, however, suggested differences over the budget are so great the summit could end quickly and the can kicked down the road to another summit – or two – in the coming months.

An analyst at the European

Policy Centre, Marta Pilati, agreed, saying: “There likely won’t be agreement at this summit. All the member states aren’t showing much willingness to compromise.”

The minimum spending in the multi-annual financial framework (MFF), as the long-term budget is called, is just over one trillion euros.

- Varied goals The discord is over how much above that amount this budget should be, how spending might be shifted between priorities and how much each member state should pay as a percentage of its gross domestic product (GDP).