The UK Prime Minister has drafted a letter to state his government's position regarding the EU budgets for the next years. Basically, David Cameron would see the budgetary appropriations that finance the functioning of the European institutions and the solidarity funds being capped at the level of the 2013 budget. Even the inflation figures would not be fully taken into account.
The PM has convinced France and Germany to support his demarche.
One understands budgets are being cut all over Europe, in each member state. Therefore, there is no political excuse to let the EU allocations, in the years to come, to follow a different course. That's the bright side of this initiative. The darker side is that the cuts will take place, if the will of these three governments prevails in Brussels, in the wrong accounts. The Common Agricultural Policy, for instance, which is an archaic compensatory system that benefits above all the French, German and British owners of very large farms,will remain untouched. No reduction, there. On the other side of this story, the cohesion funds, that are supposed to bring poorer European regions closer to the Union's wealth average, will see significant cuts.
Tant pis, as President Sarkozy would say. Only the weaker states need such cohesion mechanisms. Their voice can somehow be ignored.
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