Overview
- On Wednesday, EU budget chief Piotr Serafin and Ireland’s minister Thomas Byrne urged member states to strike a deal on the 2028–2034 multiannual budget by year-end to keep the process on schedule.
- The Irish Council presidency will put forward a new compromise this Saturday that aims to bridge differences between the Commission’s proposal and reluctant capitals, but Byrne warned it will not satisfy everyone.
- The European Court of Auditors says the proposed shift to pre-financed, plan-based payments copies the COVID recovery model and makes spending harder to audit, citing a rise in the error rate to 3.8% in 2025 and concrete mis-spending such as fictitious livestock claims on Crete.
- Several fiscally cautious member states, notably the Netherlands and Germany, reject the Commission’s near-€2 trillion draft and have signalled they could block an agreement, while any new EU revenue sources must win unanimous support and be implementable by 2028.
- Auditors warn the EU’s borrowed debt could reach about €1 trillion in 2027 and that interest to repay past COVID loans could total about €93 billion in 2028–2034, which raises the political and financial stakes for negotiators and for households that may face the costs indirectly.