The EU this week will launch what could descend into another bout of drawn-out mudslinging as the EU executive presents its proposals for the bloc's long-term spending round.
The first shots in the debate about the "financial perspectives" -- the overall budget package covering 2007-2013 -- have already been fired.
The EU's six richest countries -- including the big three of Britain, France and Germany -- have called for EU spending over the six-year period to be capped at 1 percent of the bloc's gross national income (GNI).
The European Commission looks certain to dismiss the call tomorrow by recommending that the ceiling be set at nearer 1.24 percent of GNI, or about 124 billion euros (US$157 billion).
That 1.24 percent ceiling was agreed in 1999 but the EU's current annual budget is well under it at 100 billion euros. Brussels will argue that the shortfall must be plugged if the EU is serious about attaining a range of ambitious goals.
The richer member states, which are net contributors to the EU pot, will counter that at a time when they are being sued by Brussels for failing to abide by EU budget rules, the Commission can hardly justify such a steep rise.
Tomorrow's Commission presentation at a session of the European Parliament in Strasbourg will coincide with a meeting of EU finance ministers in Brussels, where reactions to the spending proposals are likely to be frosty.
They will set the stage for up to two years of hard-fought negotiations, which from May will be joined by 10 new EU member states.
The final package will shape how much resources the EU devotes to seven broad categories: agriculture, structural aid for poorer regions, internal policies, foreign aid, administration, reserves and aid for countries joining the EU.
Financial discussions in the EU, never easy, have now got wrapped up in a bitter dispute over national voting rights that scuppered a December summit aimed at agreeing a constitution for the expanding bloc.
Following the summit's failure, the six EU net contributors demanded the spending freeze in a letter to European Commission President Romano Prodi.
Observers said that Germany, the EU's paymaster, was making good on its threat of financial reprisals against Poland and Spain -- which stand to gain large amounts in EU regional aid -- for blocking the constitutional talks.
Prodi retorted that he could not work "miracles" on limited funds as the EU prepares for its biggest-ever expansion, from 15 to 25 members. Nearly all of the incomers are relatively poor and will need large amounts of structural aid.
Moreover, the Commission points out, EU leaders have a long and expensive wish list of long-term goals, Commission official said.
According to sources, the Commission may also tackle Britain's famous rebate on its EU budget contribution, secured by then-prime minister Margaret Thatcher in 1984 and controversial among London's EU partners ever since.
The rebate is all the more disputed as enlargement nears, and with it the prospect of impoverished ex-communists handing money to one of the world's richest countries.
But rather than doing away with the British rebate, Prodi is expected to propose that all other EU net contributors enjoy the same benefit, thus ending London's long-guarded privilege.
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