It's strange how even among the most ardent pro-Europeans, the topic of
the EU budget is absent. On July 16, 2025, the European Commissionpresented the Union's draft multiannual budget (the Multiannual
Financial Framework - MFF), which should run from 2028 - when it will
replace the current one - to 2034.
The main changes concern the size of the budget, which has increased
from EUR1.2 trillion to nearly EUR2 trillion. The Commission attributes
this increase to rising inflation starting in 2020, the year the current
MFF was introduced. The main spending items, the Common Agricultural
Policy (CAP) and cohesion policies, will suffer significant cuts, from
the traditional 70% of expenditure to 45%. Another new development is
that the appropriations linked to these funds will be disbursed by the
European Commission-which will also monitor them-to the governments of
the member states, bypassing the European Parliament and the regions.
Furthermore, a EUR168 billion fund is earmarked for the first repayment
of bonds issued by the European Union to finance the NextGeneration EU plan.
Finally, a quarter of the budget is not pre-allocated but remains
available to the European Commission for emergency interventions.
Wartime policies have assumed increasing importance in the EU budget, as
is confirmed by the preparatory work for this MFF: the strategic
direction established by the 2020-2027 MFF aimed to build societies
capable of best addressing future crises; today, continuing what was
done during the pandemic crisis, the Commission aims to strengthen
Europe and characterizes future crises as wartime crises. The Union's
multiannual budget is contingent on the decisions made at the NATO
summit in June, in which member states committed to investing 5% of GDP
by 2035 in "essential defense requirements and defense and
security-related expenditure." In this regard, a document dated October
16, "Joint communication to the European Parliament, the European
Council, and the Council - Preserving Peace - Defence Readiness Roadmap
2030," aims to leverage public and private capital within the MFF
currently under discussion to benefit the funds earmarked for defense
and space (Competitiveness Fund, Horizon Europe).
The mechanism for this mobilization is similar to that of NextGeneration EU:
The European Commission, of which Baroness Ursula von der Leyen is
president, will operate on the financial markets through bonds
guaranteed by the margin for maneuver, that is, the difference between
the ceiling on own resources (the maximum revenue the EU can generate)
and actual expenditure: this is a veritable "markup" that the Commission
applies to budgeted expenditure.
These amounts are in addition to the unallocated budget.
The claim that the budget increase is caused by rising inflation is
contradicted by the fact that the European Commission plans to introduce
new taxes, to be paid by all European citizens, to cover the projected
expenditure and guarantee the Commission's margin for maneuver.
As "Lavoce.info" points out, this budget is part of the path defined by
the Council and the European Commission starting in 2021, so any
opposition expressed in the European Parliament and among member states
is destined to be defeated.
The amount of money available to the Commission and its ability to
operate on financial markets are a measure of the Commission's autonomy
from representative institutions (the European Parliament and national
parliaments), which are forced to play an increasingly passive role in
European Union decisions.
The concentration and centralization of production necessitates an
equally concentrated and centralized political structure: national
governments are entrusted with the task of articulating the programs
defined at the European level across the various countries.
Emergency policy is the weapon used by the Commission to accumulate
power and economic resources: this is how the pandemic emergency was
managed, generating colossal enrichments for multinationals linked to
the Commission and the financial institutions that brokered the
financing. This is the underlying reason for the Ukrainian emergency,
for which another EUR100 billion is planned in the next MFF, and then
for the competition with Russia. And if this leads us to pay
stratospheric energy prices, if this throws European production into a
protracted crisis, there is always room for speculation in military
supplies. The sun never sets on European fixers and bureaucracy.
Polycarp
https://umanitanova.org/la-cresta-di-ursula-la-governance-autoritaria-dellunione-europea/
_________________________________________
A - I N F O S N E W S S E R V I C E
By, For, and About Anarchists
Send news reports to A-infos-en mailing list
A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
Geen opmerkingen:
Een reactie posten