Presidents, prime ministers and chancellors across Europe were packing their bags this week in preparation for a long weekend in Brussels. However, they will not be taking in the baroque majesty of the Grand Place or savoring the local culinary treats.
Instead, they will be preparing for that most infamous of events, a “four shirter,” to use the clothes-packing gauge adopted by male diplomats to measure the length and horror of EU leaders’ summits in the Belgian capital.
The thorny subject this time around? Money. And the problem? The UK.
The UK’s withdrawal from the EU has left a huge 75 billion euros (US$80.95 billion) hole in the bloc’s budget for the next seven years, from next year to 2027.
“And now we are fighting like ferrets in a sack,” one EU diplomat said with a sigh.
Covering items ranging from agricultural subsidies to science programs and the EU’s efforts to combat the climate emergency, the new multi-annual financial framework (MFF) needs to be agreed by the leaders and an increasingly unpredictable European Parliament before the end of the year.
Without agreement, everything risks grinding to a halt in just nine months’ time, including the flow of cohesion funds, the cash dedicated to supporting the poorest member states.
Budget discussions in Brussels are always rancorous affairs, but this one is of a different order: Everyone will have to pay more. No one wants to.
EU capitals were expected to be bristling for a fight when they arrived in Brussels yesterday for the first day.
Ominously for the diplomatic corps, an end date for the summit has not been fixed, but four days of talking are on the cards.
There are two main rivals in the budget battle.
On one side are those who proudly describe themselves as “the Frugals” — the Netherlands, Austria, Sweden and Denmark (although there are some concerns within the camp that the new Austrian coalition government, being a bit Green now, has been lost to them, and that the Swedes are going soft).
As the biggest net payers, the Frugals have been insisting on a budget of no more than 1 percent of the EU’s gross national income.
The European Commission’s initial proposal was for 1.1 percent — about 1.25 trillion euros over the seven years.
Then there are the “Friends of Cohesion” (FoC).
“The Friends of Corruption, you mean?” spat one EU diplomat from a Frugal state.
The 15 under the FoC flag are the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, Estonia, Croatia, Malta, Slovenia, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Lithuania, Latvia, Romania, Portugal and Greece.
The Frugals say that the commission’s 90 billion euros in cuts to agriculture and cohesion funding are not enough.
The FoC say they are being unfairly targeted and that the richer countries should cough up some more, setting up a battle between east and west.
The debate is all the more toxic as the commission has proposed that cohesion funds should also, in the future, be conditional on member states respecting the rule of law.
It is a red rag to the bulls in the nationalist governments of Hungary and Poland, which are already in a battle with Brussels over their judicial reforms, among other issues.
Then there is France and Germany. Berlin’s main concern is that it does not come out of it looking worse than the French.
In Paris, the government just worries about how much cash is going to go to its farmers, one senior EU official said.
The fragmentation of the national debates leaves it impossible to say what will happen, a second official said, with even Irish politics in turmoil following the election that has made Sinn Fein Ireland’s second-largest parliamentary party.
Going in to the summit, European Council President Charles Michel, a former prime minister of Belgium, has been engaged in furious shuttle diplomacy around the capitals.
Michel has put forward an alternative proposal for the budget to be 1.074 percent of the bloc’s gross national income (1.094 trillion euros) in an attempt to split the difference between the warring camps.
“In this negotiation, we are not expecting member states to be happy, but the degree of dissatisfaction will be key,” a senior EU official said.
“No chance,” a Frugal diplomat said. “There is not a lot to say, except we won’t pay. And as the Rolling Stones song goes: Time Is On My Side.”
As it has striven toward superiority in most measures of the Asian military balance, China is now ready to challenge the undersea balance of power, long dominated by the United States, a decisive advantage crucial to its ability to deter blockade and invasion of Taiwan by the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). America expended enormous treasure to develop the technology, logistics, training, and personnel to emerge victorious in the Cold War undersea struggle against the former Soviet Union, and to remain superior today; the US is not used to considering the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN)
The annual summit of East Asia and other events around the ASEAN summit in October and November every year have become the most important gathering of leaders in the Indo-Pacific region. This year, as Laos is the chair of ASEAN, it was privileged to host all of the ministerial and summit meetings associated with ASEAN. Besides the main summit, this included the high-profile East Asia Summit, ASEAN summits with its dialogue partners and the ASEAN Plus Three Summit with China, Japan and South Korea. The events and what happens around them have changed over the past 15 years from a US-supported, ASEAN-led
Lately, China has been inviting Taiwanese influencers to travel to China’s Xinjiang region to make films, weaving a “beautiful Xinjiang” narrative as an antidote to the international community’s criticisms by creating a Potemkin village where nothing is awry. Such manipulations appear harmless — even compelling enough for people to go there — but peeling back the shiny veneer reveals something more insidious, something that is hard to ignore. These films are not only meant to promote tourism, but also harbor a deeper level of political intentions. Xinjiang — a region of China continuously listed in global human rights reports —
President William Lai’s (賴清德) first Double Ten National Day address had two strategic goals. For domestic affairs, the speech aimed to foster consensus on national identity, strengthen the country and unite the Taiwanese against a Chinese invasion. In terms of cross-strait relations, the speech aimed to mitigate tensions in the Taiwan Strait and promote the coexistence and prosperity of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in China and the Republic of China (ROC). Lai is taking a different stance from previous Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) administrations on domestic political issues. During his speech, he said: “The PRC could not be the
RSS