BRUSSELS — The prospect of the far right running a German state for the first time since 1945 is sharpening pressure on EU governments to strike a deal on the bloc’s next seven-year budget. That’s the headline in Brussels now: not public need, not democratic consent, but the fear that elections will make the machinery of rule harder to manage. The budget talks are being driven by the same old reflex — get the deal done before voters, and before the political weather turns uglier for the people already in charge.
Sunday’s regional election in Saxony-Anhalt is feeding alarm among European diplomats, who say disagreements between countries will only get worse next year as voters go to the polls in France, Spain, Italy, Poland, Greece, Estonia and Slovakia in 2027. The prospect of more Euroskeptic voices winning power, with a mandate to make the EU less expensive and less powerful, is pushing leaders to try to settle the budget before the end of the year. The democratic theatre is clear enough. The real audience is the bloc’s governing class, trying to lock in its spending plan before the next round of political disruption.
Brussels Counts the Votes, Not the People
The Alternative for Germany, or AfD, is on course to be within a few seats of winning an absolute parliamentary majority in the east German state on Sunday. The result would not directly change Germany’s national leadership, but diplomats and officials say votes in other countries next year could have a wider effect on the talks. Siegfried Mureșan, the Parliament’s lead lawmaker on the budget, said: “With four of the five largest EU member states voting in parliamentary or presidential elections, it will be more difficult to reach an agreement, especially if we look at the rise of anti-European populism.” He added: “Everyone understands the obvious negative consequences of a delayed adoption and entry into force of the MFF [the Multiannual Financial Framework, the seven-year budget].”
That’s the language of the Brussels apparatus: delay is bad, not because ordinary people lose anything they can name, but because the budget machine might stall. Negotiations on the budget, which must be agreed by all 27 governments, have been deadlocked for months. Neither of the two main groups of countries — those that want the EU to have more to spend and those that want it to have less — has gained an advantage by giving ground so far. European Council President António Costa is touring capitals in an effort to narrow differences. One diplomat involved in the talks said: “Saxony-Anhalt could really define the fall. It will make it clear that it is crucial to get agreement this year. If we don’t get it in December, it can’t be February or March, that will be too close to the French election.”
The Budget as a Power Map
Brussels is also worried about the prospect of France’s far-right veteran Marine Le Pen winning the country’s presidential election, scheduled to start on April 18, and following through on her campaign pledge to halve France’s contribution to the EU budget. The diplomats and EU officials said that adds urgency for France to get a deal before the election. At the same time, domestic pressure is making the issue more complicated for Emmanuel Macron, whose far-right opponents are pushing for massive reductions in France’s own EU contributions. Macron is pushing for new EU-wide taxes, known as “own resources,” to pay for the bloc’s priorities without capitals being stuck with the bill themselves. France wants Brussels to have the power to levy taxes on U.S. digital giants, foreign polluters and online gambling.
An EU official said: “Any agreement without own resources will be a no-go for France.” That line says plenty. The argument isn’t about whether the EU should have more power over people’s lives. It’s about which level of the hierarchy gets to collect the money and which capital gets to complain about the invoice. The budget becomes a contest over who can shift the burden, not a debate over what ordinary people actually need.
The disagreements were aired again at a meeting of European ministers that began on Thursday in Ireland, which holds the six-month rotating presidency of the Council of the EU. Germany is leading a group of countries that want the EU budget to be smaller than the one proposed by the European Commission, but EU Budget Commissioner Piotr Serafin said any cuts would hit the areas Brussels most wants to strengthen: competitiveness, defense and security. He said those priorities could “become the first victims of cuts.”
There it is in plain language. Competitiveness, defense and security. The vocabulary of the single market, the war machine, and the border regime, all wrapped together in one budget fight. The Commission wants the money to keep flowing into the priorities that preserve the system. The governments want to argue over the size of the pot. Nobody at the top is talking about handing power down.
Who Pays, Who Commands
The budget will be discussed at a summit of EU leaders on Oct. 15, when Ireland will present an updated negotiating position. Two officials said an additional summit is expected on Nov. 26-27 to advance the talks, and a final, potentially very long, meeting will take place in December, when leaders will be pressed not to leave without a deal. Countries remain split on the size of the budget. A handful of wealthier countries led by Germany want hundreds of billions of euros shaved off the seven-year spending plan. Others, including Romania, Poland and other net recipients of EU funds, want to keep the pot at its current size. The EU’s frontier countries have also launched a push for more funding to deal with Russia’s hybrid threats and support their economies.
Estonian Prime Minister Kirsten Michal said after a meeting with Costa last week: “The next EU budget will inevitably involve difficult choices. There will never be enough money for every priority. But the choice should be clear: Europe cannot ask its eastern members to carry a growing security burden while funding priorities as if the world had not changed.”
Those words fit the whole arrangement. The eastern members are told to carry more security burden. The frontier countries ask for more funding. Germany wants hundreds of billions shaved off. France wants tax powers. The Commission wants competitiveness, defense and security protected. The EU’s budget process looks less like shared governance than a managed struggle over who absorbs the costs of the bloc’s own hierarchy.
Those involved in the negotiations said the deadlock, while deep, is likely to be resolved by a flurry of talks for the rest of this year. One official said: “Everybody seems to be aware of and committed to the end-of-year deadline.” Costa’s “key message has been we need to get this deal over the line by then because of the context.” Asked whether elections, including in Saxony-Anhalt, were creating a sense of urgency in budget talks, Ireland’s Europe Minister Thomas Byrne, who is steering the negotiations on behalf of the EU presidency country, said Dublin had a simple agenda: “To get it done by the end of the year in order that the legislation can be passed next year.” Another diplomat from a country that wants the budget to be smaller than the Commission proposed said: “If you want to do it, you have to do it within the next three months. After that, maybe the party is over for all of us.”
The party, for the people at the top, is the budget itself. The rest of Europe gets deadlines, security burdens, and a choice between one set of managers and another.