BRUSSELS — The two biggest groups in the European Parliament are planning to torpedo key elements of Brussels’ next seven-year budget proposal, in a major challenge to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s €1.8 trillion spending plan.
In what is shaping up into a major clash, the conservative European People’s Party (EPP) and center-left Socialists and Democrats are both threatening to ask the Commission to withdraw a major plank of its budget proposal from July.
This latest spat comes after months of bad blood between von der Leyen and the Parliament. She survived a no-confidence vote in July and is facing two new no-confidence motions next week, which she is widely expected to survive.
“We are ready to ask the Commission to withdraw its current proposal and make a new and better one reflecting our concerns,” the Socialists and Democrats said in a statement to POLITICO.
“We have made our decision on what we are ready to do with this proposal,” the statement said.
Both major parties want von der Leyen to ditch a plan to lump agricultural funds and regional payments ― which make up more than half of the budget ― into a single cash pot handled by national governments.
They complain this is a smokescreen to cut funding to farmers, who are core backers of the EPP ― although the Commission rejects this view.
It is particularly worrying for von der Leyen that her own EPP party is pushing the idea of binning the proposal — a position confirmed by three lawmakers and one aide working on the budget file.
“[The budget proposal] is first of all a problem when it comes to the internal market because we think that this would lead to a fragmentation of the agricultural market inside the EU,” the EPP’s spokesperson Daniel Köster told reporters on Friday.
While Köster said the EPP had not decided how to respond, lawmakers working on the budget said the EPP was steering discussions on ditching the proposal because of agricultural interests.
The Socialists also object to the budget proposal because they argue not enough money is being given to social projects.
Parliament’s initiative could throw a spanner in the negotiations over the entire 2028-2034 budget.
At this stage, the Commission can theoretically reject Parliament’s calls — but that would spell trouble further down the line as the approval of lawmakers is ultimately necessary for the budget to come into force.
These developments heap pressure on the liberal Renew Europe group — a key member of the pro-EU majority backing von der Leyen — to take a side despite deep divisions within their ranks.
In the past, Renew has criticized the idea of shifting to the single national cash pot, but it remains unclear whether it will ask the Commission to withdraw the proposal.
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