The European Parliament’s lead budget negotiators have publicly rejected the Irish presidency’s negotiating box for the EU’s next multiannual financial framework (MFF), declaring that “cuts that weaken Europe will not get our consent.” In a joint statement on October 9, co-rapporteurs Siegfried Muresan (EPP, Romania) and Carla Tavares (S&D, Portugal), joined by own-resources rapporteurs Danuse Nerudova and Sandra Gomez Lopez, said the draft could not be the starting point for an agreement.
The numbers in dispute are large. The presidency’s draft cuts the Commission’s July 2025 proposal by 8 percent, with competitiveness funding down 12.8 percent and external action down 17.4 percent, according to the rapporteurs. Combined with updated GNI forecasts, the EU budget would fall to about 1.02 percent of GNI, well below the 1.14 percent level agreed for the current period. The rapporteurs argue that of the headline 356 billion euro nominal increase over the current MFF, 150 billion would cover NextGenerationEU repayment costs, and that the real value of the budget would actually fall by 161 billion euros, or 10 percent, after inflation.
The revenue side is the Parliament’s red line. The statement insists that new own resources are “part of the solution, not the problem,” accusing the presidency of refusing to take any decision on revenues. Parliament has proposed a digital services levy, an online gambling levy and a levy on crypto-asset capital gains that could add 30 billion euros on top of the 57.4 billion in the Commission’s proposal. “Without progress in own resources there is no MFF,” Gomez Lopez said.
The institutional mechanics give the threat force: the long-term budget needs unanimity in Council and Parliament’s consent by an absolute majority of MEPs. With the October 15-16 European Council days away and France pushing the EU-China retaliation tool at the same meeting, the budget standoff adds a second fault line to a summit that was already shaping up as a test of EU cohesion.