Parliament and Council are under pressure to finalize negotiations before 2027’s elections in France, Italy, Spain and Poland threaten to derail talks and delay payouts.
A protracted standoff in Strasbourg risks damaging its standing in the talks and prolonging negotiations, leaving them exposed to last-minute interventions. France’s far-right National Rally — which says it wants to halve Paris’s contribution to the EU budget — is currently leading the polls in France.
“We have to move fast. With the upcoming elections in France, the EU budget could become very vulnerable if we don’t set clear guardrails now,” Boeselager said.
The Parliament pledged to agree its position on the budget by November, to be ready to start negotiations with governments as early as January 2027. MEPs have limited power over the size of the budget, but they negotiate on an equal footing with governments over the rules and structure of the cash pot.
The leaders of Parliament’s biggest parties will meet on Wednesday to suggest ways to break the deadlock in the negotiations.
Officials taking part in the talks complain that the involvement of three different committees — covering budget, agriculture, regional policy — is creating overlaps and delays in the talks over the National and Regional Partnership Plans (NRPPs) which include farmers’ subsidies and regional payouts.
Lawmakers in the agriculture committee are conducting a rearguard push to strengthen the Common Agricultural Policy, which governs farmers’ subsidies worth over €300 billion, by carving it out from the NRPPs. The move is controversial with the other committees who agreed to preserve the basic framework of the Commission’s proposal to facilitate a deal by the end of the year.
“Everyone knows that CAP cannot be deleted out of the architecture without a new Commission proposal and an impossible one-year delay of negotiations,” Boeselager said.