“On 15 November in Brussels, talks between member states and MEPs on the 2011 EU budget collapsed, threatening to plunge community funding systems into a state of crisis,” reports Le Monde. Now that the deadline for an agreement has passed, “the EU commission will have to draft a new proposal, while the first months of next year will be funded on the basis of the 2010 budget,” explains the EUObserver.

According to the news website, negotiations broke down because member states were reluctant to grant MEPs extra powers in future multi-annual budget negotiations. British and Dutch ministers refused to “discuss contentious issues for the long-term budgetary perspective, such as raising more EU ‘own resources’ through supplementary taxes or the ‘flexibility’ of the budget when unexpected expenses arise.” 

“Member states were demanding that the increase to the budget be  limited to 2.91% (on an amount of 123 billion euros),” points out Le Soir, “and parliament had finally accepted this rate of increase, even though it had initially hoped for twice as much. MEPs are not indifferent to the budgetary difficulties that are currently being experienced by most if not all of Europe’s member states.” However,the Brussels daily adds that “the battle over the budget is a highly political one. The European Parliament wants to move ahead into the future. In particular, it wants to have a say on the future financing of the Union.”